This was... a lot... this book literally left me depressed and jaded. It is though, beautifully written! For the second publish book of Rawi Hage, I understand the importance it has in Montreal and Canadian Literature overall. I know the name coackroach will have a lot thinking that this book is Kafka-esque but it isn't a comparaison that holds up after reading it. In a way it reminded much more about Dany Lafferière's "How to make love to a negro without getting tired".
It is gritty, clever, funny, absurd and dark. It's a book filled with stories of misery punctuated with sardonic laughs and nihilistic smiles.
In short you follow a very "socially dysfunctional" and mentally ill Lebanese immigrant, that has done terrible things in his past and do terrible things now, albeit in a more subdued way.
I have found it a hard read, it was about 300 pages in length and while I was surprised by the ending which abruptly concludes a sort of narrative introduced about 2/3rd's in. I was glad it was over, no matter how well written and engaging a lot of that novel was, so much of it felt tedious and actually I believe it is purposeful.
The main character, after all, is introduced as he sits across from a therapist that he is mandated to see due to his failed attempt on his life. Rawi Hage is really skilled at bringing us into his psyche, no matter how slimy and uncomfortable it is. Unfortunately though that leads to quite triggering scenes, especially sexual ones with women and a teenager (you read that right).
This said you're never meant to sympathize with the guy and instead are just showed the brutal ways in which colonialism and capitalism shapes the lives of the individuals under it. All the characters we focus on are hurting, some more than others perhaps but all of their lives and behaviours are shaped by those social structures and the violence cultivated under them.
I'm sure anyone could see that coming but Cockroach main theme is the dehumanization of the marginalized and impoverished. How someone who comes to sneak into people's home and steal, had to morph and contort, losing their humanity in the process, shaped by the tubes that swallows them and the underground they find refuge into.