We look back on the events of our lives in an attempt to make sense of our story, to create a cohesive narrative of our experiences. But is it possible, or even helpful, to try to impose order when our lives are often chaotic, spontaneous, and coincidental?

Author Rabih Alameddine offers a fresh take on life review in his latest novel, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible, where Raja’s life story is told with honesty and humor, holding space for the beautiful, painful, and often ambivalent mess that is real life.

Q: In your novel The True True Story of Raja the Gullible, 63-year-old Raja recounts his life’s story, including its joys, heartaches, and absurdities. What are the benefits of this process of looking back for Raja?

Rabih Alameddine: One benefit is that by telling his story, Raja discovers what his story actually is. He thinks he’s telling us about his life, but his mother keeps escaping the parentheses and taking over. That’s something looking back can do: show you what mattered before you knew it mattered.

The past also changes because we change. Something that was unbearable at 20 might look absurd at 60, or tender, or might reveal itself as an expression of love you couldn’t recognize at the time. The event hasn’t changed, but your relationship to it has.

And Raja has lived through a great deal of randomness: civil war, kidnapping, death, economic collapse. Storytelling gives randomness a shape. The shape is not necessarily true; that’s partly why the book is called the true true story. We salt and pepper our memories. We rearrange them. We discover........

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