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y separately published work icon Losing Face single work   novel  
Alternative title: Losing Face : A Novel
Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Losing Face
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'A stunning, thought-provoking novel about facing up to your family and your future, dealing with timely issues around sexual consent and inherited trauma. Joey is young, indifferent. He’s drifting around Western Sydney unaware of how his passivity might lead him even further adrift, off the rails, into a violent crime.

'Meanwhile his grandmother Elaine – a proud Lebanese woman – tries to hold her family and herself together in the wake of Joey’s actions. In her family, history repeats itself, vices come and go, and uncovering long-buried secrets isn’t always cathartic.

'This gripping and hard-hitting novel reveals the richness and complexity of contemporary Australian life and tests the idea that facing consequences will make us better people.' (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Dedication: For my mum, Nawal, and my aunty, Inaam
  •  Selected as one of the Guardian Australia best Australian books of 2022

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon A Changed Man : Masculinities and Shame in Suburban Australian Fiction and Losing Face George Haddad , Sydney : Western Sydney University , 2023 26296474 2023 single work single work criticism thesis

    'This thesis consists of an exegesis, ‘A Changed Man’, and a novel, ‘Losing Face’. Together they analyse the intersection of masculinities, shame and suburbia in Australia. The exegesis closely reads Christos Tsiolkas’ The Jesus Man (1999) and Peter Polites’ The Pillars (2019) to argue that it is the key characters’ experience of the intersection of masculinities, shame and suburbia that drives them to lose their morality and commit violent and reprehensible crimes. ‘A Changed Man’ discusses the academic research which informed the development of my work of fiction, ‘Losing Face’, and more broadly, attempts to offer research which can inform the reading of similar texts, to better understand the often violent outcomes of the characters’ experience of the intersection of masculinities, shame and suburbia. The introduction of the exegesis highlights key concepts that will be used as a framework for analysing the novels in the two chapters that follow. Chapter One addresses The Jesus Man (1999) and Chapter Two addresses The Pillars (2019). The conclusion proposes that The Stefano brothers in The Jesus Man and all key characters in The Pillars including Pano, Kane and Basil, exist and operate in various kinds of habitus (suburban, social, family, work) that crossover and bring with them a different set of pressures to conform. Negotiating this overlap of pressure, and dealing with the conflict of shame and consecrated manhood, is what drives the characters to act out destructively and violently. The key characters in the novels lack mobility and control which amplifies their visceral experience of the intersection of masculinities, shame and suburbia. To remedy this pressure they lose their morality, exploit others, and undertake violent and reprehensible actions. The creative component of the thesis, titled ‘Losing Face’, tells the story of a troubled young Lebanese-Australian man living in Western Sydney in 2019. Throughout the novel, I aim to engage with and recognise the complexities of masculine identity as part of contemporary and diverse Australian culture. Additionally, the novel attempts to introduce nuances of sexuality and ethnic identity that are not often depicted in texts with similar key characters and themes. At the centre of ‘Losing Face’ is the sexual assault of a young woman in a suburban car park. This event draws on how the key characters’ performance of masculinity leads to violent outcomes that subordinate, traumatise and injure women.' (Publication summary)

    Sydney : Western Sydney University , 2023

Other Formats

Works about this Work

Best of 2022 in Australian Reading Scott Limbrick , Jonno Revanche , Ellen O'Brien , Megan Cheong , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2023;

— Review of This All Come Back Now 2022 anthology short story ; Unlimited Futures 2022 anthology short story ; An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life Paul Dalla Rosa , 2022 selected work short story ; Women I Know Katerina Gibson , 2022 selected work short story ; Cautionary Tales for Excitable Girls Anne Casey-Hardy , 2022 selected work short story ; Everything Feels like the End of the World Else Fitzgerald , 2022 selected work short story ; The Burnished Sun Mirandi Riwoe , 2022 selected work short story ; This Devastating Fever Sophie Cunningham , 2022 single work novel ; Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel ; Root and Branch : Essays on Inheritance Eda Gunaydin , 2022 selected work essay ; People Who Lunch : Essays on Work, Leisure and Loose Living Sally Olds , 2022 selected work essay ; The Diplomat Chris Womersley , 2022 single work novel
Diminished Patriarchal Dividend Dion Kagan , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022;

— Review of Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel
[Review] Losing Face : George Haddad Bri Lee , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Monthly , August 2022; (p. 57)

— Review of Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel
'BOTH ELAINE AND her grandson, Joey, are lying to themselves. Elaine’s pokie addiction is one thing; she performs a delusional bargaining routine while feeding every cent of her pension into the machines each week. Joey’s numbers come up much faster and wreak more devastation; he is hanging out with mates and not-quite-mates, taking drugs, and they rape a young woman' (Introduction)
George Haddad Losing Face Geordie Williamson , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 11-17 June 2022;

— Review of Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel
'“Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity or genuineness,” wrote Benedict Anderson, the late, great Irish historian of nationalism, “but in the style in which they are imagined.” It’s a line that should ring in the ears of those who have spent time reading the recent explosion of fictions by Australian authors from Middle Eastern backgrounds. Figures such as Michael Mohammed Ahmad and Omar Sakr have written novels that ache with a sense of lost connection – whether to language, culture, religion, people or place – yet do so in a manner so vivid and charismatic, their woundedness takes on a distinct character.'

 (Introduction)

Fractured Identity Crisis Jack Cameron Stanton , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 21 May 2022; (p. 16)

— Review of Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel
Losing Face by George Haddad Review – a Rich, Complex Story of Consent and Coming of Age Sarah Ayoub , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 6 May 2022;

— Review of Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel
The Best New Books Released in May as Selected by Avid Readers and Critics Claire Nichols , Sarah L'Estrange , Declan Fry , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , May 2022;

— Review of Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel ; Daisy and Woolf Michelle Cahill , 2022 single work novel ; An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life Paul Dalla Rosa , 2022 selected work short story ; The Jaguar Sarah Holland-Batt , 2022 selected work poetry
Fractured Identity Crisis Jack Cameron Stanton , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 21 May 2022; (p. 16)

— Review of Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel
George Haddad Losing Face Geordie Williamson , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 11-17 June 2022;

— Review of Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel
'“Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity or genuineness,” wrote Benedict Anderson, the late, great Irish historian of nationalism, “but in the style in which they are imagined.” It’s a line that should ring in the ears of those who have spent time reading the recent explosion of fictions by Australian authors from Middle Eastern backgrounds. Figures such as Michael Mohammed Ahmad and Omar Sakr have written novels that ache with a sense of lost connection – whether to language, culture, religion, people or place – yet do so in a manner so vivid and charismatic, their woundedness takes on a distinct character.'

 (Introduction)

[Review] Losing Face : George Haddad Bri Lee , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Monthly , August 2022; (p. 57)

— Review of Losing Face George Haddad , 2022 single work novel
'BOTH ELAINE AND her grandson, Joey, are lying to themselves. Elaine’s pokie addiction is one thing; she performs a delusional bargaining routine while feeding every cent of her pension into the machines each week. Joey’s numbers come up much faster and wreak more devastation; he is hanging out with mates and not-quite-mates, taking drugs, and they rape a young woman' (Introduction)
George Haddad and Omar Sakr Centre Bisexual Arab Australian Protagonists in Their Debut Novels Smriti Daniel , 2022 single work column
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , May 2022;
Last amended 18 May 2023 12:07:53
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