Waiting on Wednesday (2): Carnival by Rawi Hage

Waiting on Wednesday is a book meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we're all eagerly anticipating.
Please follow the link to visit her site!

Title: Carnival
Author: Rawi Hage
Release Date: September 29/2012
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Page Count: 304 

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo 

In the Carnival city there are two types of taxi drivers -- the spiders and the flies. The spiders patiently sit in their cars and wait for the calls to come. But the flies are wanderers - they roam the streets, looking for the raised hands of passengers among life''s perpetual flux.

Fly is a wanderer and a knower. Raised in the circus, the son of a golden-haired trapeze artist and a flying carpet pilot from the East, he is destined to drift and observe. From his taxi we see the world in all its carnivalesque beauty and ugliness. We meet criminals, prostitutes, madmen, magicians, and clowns of many kinds. We meet ordinary people going to extraordinary places, and revolutionaries trying to live ordinary lives. Hunger and injustice claw at the city, and books provide the only true shelter. And when the Carnival starts, all limits dissolve, and a gunshot goes off...

With all of the beauty, truth, rage, and peripatetic storytelling that have made Cockroach and De Niro's Game international publishing sensations, Carnival gives us Rawi Hage at his searing best. Alternately laughing at absurdity and crying out at oppression, by turns outrageous, hilarious, sorrowful, and stirring, Carnival is a tour de force that will make all of life''s passengers squirm in their comfortable, complacent backseats.

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I'm a little ashamed to say that I've never experienced Rawi Hage's writing but I have definite plans to. I'll admit that it was the cover of this book that first sparked my interest. As a designer, I just couldn't resist it-it's beautiful! Slightly disturbing yes, but oh how beautiful! I feel like this book is going to give me something I've been missing in literature for a long time. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying reading YA, but the truth is..it doesn't fill me, not the way adult fiction has, or did. I severely miss the writing that can (usually) only be crafted by writers with years of experience, not only in writing but in life. I've found that the majority of YA I'm reading has been written by much younger authors, and it's usually their first book.

Anyways, this storyline makes my head spin with joy and the anticipation of an all-encompassing feeling of magic realism-I hope it doesn't disappoint. This line alone was enough to sell me:
  
"Hunger and injustice claw at the city, and books provide the only true shelter."