This paper explores the means whereby postcolonial fiction preserves a cultural heritage while rejecting the Orientalist fetishization of an “authentic” cultural essence. It does so through a close reading of Rabih Alameddine’s novel The Hakawati (2008), whose eponymous Middle Eastern storyteller embodies a non-normative relationship to culture and tradition. The novel’s focus on reinvention is rooted in the performative aspect of oral narration, central to the ḥakawātī’s craft: the latter’s traditional role as a vector of collective memory allows for cultural identity to emerge as the result of the active choice, on both the teller and the listener’s part, to partake in a shared narrative universe, irrespective of its factuality. The narrator’s own trajectory as a diasporic subject, and his ultimate decision to take on the role of family storyteller, following in his late grandfather’s footsteps, further demonstrates the adaptability of storytelling as a vessel for social cohesion, even amidst the disparity of the diaspora.