Rawi Hage is a novelist residing in Montreal since 1991. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, he studied photography at Dawson College and Fine Arts at Concordia University, and holds an MFA from the Université du Québec à Montreal. After establishing himself as a photographer, whose work has been widely exhibited and acquired by the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and working as a cab driver in Montreal, he decided to pursue writing.

De Niro’s Game (2006), his first novel, won the 2008 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for English Fiction. It also received two Quebec awards, the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the McAusian First Book Prize. His second novel, Cockroach (2008) was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Both this novel and his third one, Carnival (2012) also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.