When Beirut-born Rawi Hage was asked to write something for a photo exhibition that included his works, he wrote some stories on postcards that were sent to one fictional character.

The curator suggested Hage become a writer. And he did, starting with short stories.

The 51-year-old writer and photographer now writes more than he takes pictures. He has published three novels including “De Niro’s Game” (2006), which has been translated into Chinese.

During his China tour last month, the award-winning writer, who has worked in restaurants and warehouses, as well as a taxi driver, talks with Shanghai Daily about his identity, trans-cultural experiences, ideas about religion, writing and more.

Q: You left for New York at the age of 19, during the Lebanese Civil War, and then moved to Canada and lived there for 24 years. What was your life like and what do you think about identity?

A: The war started in 1974 when I was 10. I basically grew up there during the war and was only able to flee by myself near the end of it.

I lived in New York for eight years, first to study, and soon couldn’t afford to continue school. I did a lot of different jobs just to survive, and I studied and worked in photography. I fell in love with the magic when I worked as a dark room technician and for the first time, I saw pictures coming out of the thick liquid.

It took time for me to adjust to the weather and the quietness of Canada. I like being alone in big cities — in my own solitude but surrounded by people, not trees or horses.

It is always conflicting and complex for a young man to be exposed to many cultures, when you are not part of that country. I think I will always look like a minority. I don’t see myself belonging to any particular community, I’m a transnational writer who belongs to the universe, and not just one identity.

Q: In your debut novel “De Niro’s Game,” you wrote about Bassam and George, friends who took different paths — one staying in Beirut and the other leaving to start a new life in another country. Is that drawn from your personal experience?

A: It is sort of like the alternative if I stayed and did not leave. It is not necessarily all from my own experience, but from life, from people’s experience.

I wanted to write about what would have happened for people who have stayed, not necessarily me, but people who didn’t have the alternative to leave.

Q: In your most recent novel, “Carnival,” the protagonist is a taxi driver born in a traveling circus. Does it have anything to do with your years of experience as a taxi driver?

A: I worked as a taxi driver between 2005 and 2007, and when I did, I thought I should never write a novel about taxi drivers, because it is just cliché, everyone wants to write about it because there are so many stories.

But then, I changed the idea.

There are two types of taxi drivers, the “spiders” who just wait for the dispatchers to give them assignments and the “flies” who wander the streets and pick up people.

I was more like a “fly.” And I made it into an allegorical way of different types of people, about people who like to be free, people who live non-conventional life. For them, it’s harder and they tend to pay the price somewhere down the road.

Q: What about the idea of a traveling circus? It is an old concept that is rarely seen today, why does your protagonist come from a traveling circus?

A: In the old days, a lot of people who are not accepted by society, because of deformity, poverty or other reasons, are given to the traveling circus by their parents. Some of them become celebrities. The traveling circus is like a community of tolerance, where everybody is odd, where not everyone is perfect.

They were equal in the circus.

Living as a minority means the possibility of not getting accepted, of not getting tolerated because of your class, your gender, your religion, your sexual orientation ... I care about marginal people, I write about them, I make them heroes in my book.

Q: Whether a taxi or in the circus, the characters seem to be moving all the time and echo with the idea of carnival, which is the title of your new book. What is carnival?

A: I think it’s my best book so far. I’m not saying that because it’s my last book, but because it has many characters. It acts like a carnival, which is chaotic, a lot of movement, and a reflection on what carnival is at the base. It is seasonal, ritual, and a celebration of life and sexual freedom.

Taxi or circus, it is all moving all the time. The connection is that there is no one place. And within movement, there is death too, there is nothing stable in movement. It is also a reflection on the university, which is always moving. With university, there is always death and rebirth.

The whole book is about people who never settle down, people who are always on the run, who always travel. It is about this whole idea of the familiarity of things, about accepting things, accepting that we are just in the process of passage. It is a philosophical contemplation about life, religion and death.

It is about acknowledging death, about accepting death as an end, not as a religious representation of anything else like heaven or after world. It is a very hard concept to accept, and devastating as it is, but it is about how to come to terms with it.

Q: Will you write about your other jobs?

A: I should write about my years as a photographer. I did commercial photography and wedding photography, it’s very intriguing. In Montreal, there are many different ethnic communities. A lot of stories happen at weddings. The bride and groom are always stressed out, tired and hungry. And the bride never wears comfortable shoes.

And I studied the history of photography, so I also want to write about the idea of photography, what it is. It will not just be a story, but be given another layer.

Q: You are both writer and photographer, does the photography experience and skills help with your writing?

A: It definitely did, because sometimes when I’m writing, I feel very close to my subject. I’m very conscious of the space, like a photographer. I imagine myself to be there, in the scene, most times observing like the photographer, taking the photos. Sometimes I feel like I’m the protagonist, sometimes I’m like the observer who is observing myself.