Born in Beirut, Hage grew up in Lebanon and Cyprus. He moved to New York City in 1984. In 1991, he relocated to Montreal, where he studied Photography at Dawson College and Fine Arts at Concordia University. He subsequently began exhibiting as a photographer, and has had works acquired by the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Canada's capital. He holds an MFA from the Université de Québec a Montréal (UQAM). In addition to his work as a writer and a visual artist, Hage spent time as a cab driver in Montreal.

Hage has published journalism and fiction in several Canadian and American magazines, and in the PEN America Journal. His debut novel, De Niro's Game (2006), won the 2008 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the most lucrative literary prize in the world for a single novel, and was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2006 Governor General's Award for English fiction. Commenting on their selection, the IMPAC judges remarked that "its originality, its power, its lyricism, as well as its humane appeal all mark De Niro’s Game as the work of a major literary talent and make Rawi Hage a truly deserving winner." . De Niro's Game was also awarded two Quebec awards, the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the McAuslan First Book Prize

His second novel, Cockroach, was published in 2008 and was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award, And the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, as well as being the winner of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, awarded by the Quebec Writers' Federation.

His work has been translated into 20 languages.