“Leon Bakst - Costume design for the Queen of the Night from Mozart's 'Magic Flute', 1922”
Henri Matisse - Le Chat aux Poissons Rouges -1914
Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's 'unnecessary appendage'. Every year, she translates a new favourite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read - by anyone. This breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman follows Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colourful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya's own volatile past. As she tries to overcome her ageing body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left. A love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, the prodigiously gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a magnificent rendering of one woman's life in the Middle East.
Ohara Koson (aka Shoson), Crow Eating a Persimmon, c.1910
Albrecht Dürer - Iris (detail), c.1503
Eclipses depicted by Ibrahim Hakki Erzurumî (1703-1780), from his Marifatnâma (Kandilli Library, MS 369, fol. 52b.)
Fairfield Porter, "Dog at the Door", 1969, Oil on Masonite, 22" x 18"
Felix Vallotton, La Grève blanche, Vasouy, 1913,
Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese 1753-1806), The courtesan Okita of the Naniwaya adjusting her coiffure in a mirror
Boris Ignatovich, 'Atlantean' at the entrance to the Hermitage, Leningrad / St Petersburg, 1931
Good morning 10
Attributed to Wacochachi Drawing the Artist's World, ink on paper,c1830 The Plains Indians, Artists of Earth and Sky
“William Blake, Jacob's Ladder”
Jumping Carp by Muramasa Kudo. Acrylic on gold leaf, 2014
Kawase Hasui, Mount Unzen, Hizen (c 1927)
Boris Ignatovich, 'Atlantean' at the entrance to the Hermitage, Leningrad / St Petersburg, 1931
“André Kertész. A man painting his shadow. 1927.”
Katsushika Hokusai, Dragon Flying over Mount Fuji, 1849
“Jean Dieuzaide, Albarracin, Spain, 1955”