Amazon.comIn his smashing debut story collection I Dream of Microwaves, Imad Rahman navigates the world of marginal actors looking for work--and love--in quirky, unseemly venues. Following the travails of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a young Pakistani actor whose career highlight has been playing perpetrators in crime reenactments on America"s Most Wanted, Rahman offers over-the-top episodes of astounding wit and hilarity, in no particular chronological order, as Kareem: finds work as a costumed hawker of a trendy drink at a dive bar where he battles a dwarven rival for the crowd"s business; reprises Brando"s role of Kurtz in a musical production of Apocalypse Now at the Steak "N Stage dinner theatre; and partakes in his recurring girlfriend, Eileen"s, plan to pry money from her philanthropic grandmother. In the latter, title story, Kareem pretends to be a Bosnian war survivor, pitted against Eileen"s ruse. The B-listers recognize each other and, rather than tattle, enter into a duel of "acting one-upsmanship," telling increasingly grandiose stories of atrocity and third-world living. After joining a Shakespeare troupe stranded in Pakistan and watching their driver revive his van with a mouthful of gas, then immediately light a cigarette without incident, Kareem: "expected his head to pop off with a bang, flames bellowing out his open neck." Self-deprecating and funny, Kareem is a memorable thespian worth following around. --Michael FerchBook Description
When B-movie-grade actor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar opens the mail one day, he find a one-way bus ticket to Cleveland and a note from his ex-girlfriend Eileen that reads, "Good news. I am through with big dicks and henceforth thinking constantly of you." So begin the linked misadventures of one of the most endearing ne"er-do-wells to grace recent American fiction.
Kareem drops his job portraying Hispanic criminals on America"s Most Wanted and makes his way to Ohio, where he puts his dramatic skills to the test by impersonating a Bosnian refugee, in an attempt to help Eileen cash in on her grandmother"s philanthropy. Such virtuosity can"tlast, however, and Kareem moves on, looking for a way to be himself when the camera isn"t rolling. In one story, he pushes drinks as the Zima Zorro at the Ancient Mariner Sports Bar and Grill; in another he roughs up Unrepentant Privilege Abuse Perpetrators as a rental video repossessor. He returns to the theater, as stage manager to an incestuous Shakespearean troupe adrift in Pakistan, and as a Kilgore hell-bent on getting bumped up to Kurtz in a musical dinner theater production of Apocalypse Now. As he follows Kareem"s quest for the big breaks in work and love, Imad Rahman explores the struggle for success and self-invention in contemporary life with originality, irreverence, and an absurdist wit that strikes unerringly close to the bone.