Amin Maalouf – författare

Amin Maalouf, född i Libanon 1949, har varit bosatt i Paris alltsedan 1976. Efter studier i ekonomi och sociologi arbetade han i många år som utlandskorrespondent med uppdrag i över 60 olika länder. Före detta chefredaktör på två ansedda tidskrifter -- An-nahar International och Jeune Afrique, ägnar han sig idag på heltid åt sitt författarskap. Han fick sitt genombrott som författare med Korstågen enligt araberna. Boken utgavs först 1983 och har redan översatts till ett tjugotal språk. Amin Maaloufs författarskap har sedan dess utökats med fem romaner, för Tanios Klippan (1993) tilldelades han det högsta litterära priset i Frankrike samma år; Goncourtpriset.

In August 1099, Abu Saad al-Harawi, a judge from Damascus, stormed into the Caliph’s court in Baghdad, condemning its luxury while Muslims in Syria and Palestine were slaughtered by the Frankish invaders.With this charged scene, Amin Maalouf opens his exhilarating narrative history of two centuries of war that, nearly a millennium later, still cast their shadow on Arab-Western relations. The Crusaders’ first major triumph came with the sack of Jerusalem in 1099. After two days of carnage, not a single Muslim was left alive within the city walls. Yet it would take another fifty years before the Arab East mounted a united resistance.Maalouf recounts in gripping detail the fall of city after city: Antioch, betrayed from within; Tripoli, besieged and stripped of its priceless library; Ma’arra, where the Franj committed unspeakable atrocities. Against this devastation, he sketches vivid portraits of the Arabs who rose in response: Nur al-Din, the ‘Saint-King’ who forged the first united defence of Muslim nations, and Saladin, the reluctant leader who would ultimately reclaim Jerusalem.

From his chlidhood in Fez, having fled the Christian Inquisition, through his many journeys to the East as an itinerant merhcant, Hasans story is a quixotic catalogue of pirates, slave girls and princesses, encompassing the complexities of a world in a state of religious flux. Hasan too is touched by the instability of the era, performing his hadj to Mecca, then converting to Christianity, only to relapse back to the Muslim faith later in life. In re-creating his extraordinary experiences, Amin Maalouf sketches an irrisistible portrait of the Mediterranea world as it was nearly five centuries ago - the fall of Granada, the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, Renaissance Rome under the Medicis: all contribute to a background of spectacular colour, matched only by the picaresque adventures of Hasan's life.

There are ninety-nine names for God in the Koran, is it possible that there is a secret one-hundredth name? In this tale of magic and mystery, of love and danger, Balthasar's ultimate quest is to find the secret that could save the world. Before the dawn of the apocalyptic 'Year of the Beast' in 1666, Balthasar Embriaco, a Genoese Levantine merchant, sets out on an adventure that will take him across the breadth of the civilised world, from Constantinople, through the Mediterranean, to London shortly before the Great Fire. Balthasar's urgent quest is to track down a copy of one of the rarest and most coveted books ever printed, a volume called 'The Hundredth Name', its contents are thought to be of vital importance to the future of the world. There are ninety-nine names for God in the Koran, and merely to know this most secret hundredth name will, Balthasar believes, ensure his salvation.

A French entomologist, attending a symposium in Cairo, finds a cruious kind of bean being on a market stall. It is claimed the beans, derived from the scarab beetle, have magic powers; specifically the power to guarantee the brith of a male infant - and when the entomologist does some research in to the matter, discovering the incidence of female birth has become increasingly rare, he is left in no doubt that the world has entered intoa critical phase of its history.As this beloved daughter Beatrice approaches maturity, the entomologist and his partner question the validity of gender bias, and attempt to redress the growing imbalance before it reaches irreversible proportions. But in the poverty and famine of the South, where male children can mean the difference between survival and starvation, the popularity of the scarab beans is already taking devastating effect.

A gripping historical novel set in 11th century Persia that imagines the life of poet and philosopher Omar KhayyamAccused of mocking the inviolate codes of Islam, the Persian poet and sage Omar Khayyam fortuitously finds sympathy with the very man who is to judge his alleged crimes. Recognising genius, the judge decides to spare him and gives him instead a small, blank book, encouraging him to confine his thoughts to it alone.Thus begins the seamless blend of fact and fiction that is Samarkand. Vividly re-creating the history of the manuscript of the Rubaiyaat of Omar Khayyam, Amin Maalouf spans continents and centuries with breathtaking vision: the dusky exoticism of 11th-century Persia, with its poetesses and assassins; the same country's struggles nine hundred years later, seen through the eyes of an American academic obsessed with finding the original manuscript; and the fated maiden voyage of the Titanic, whose tragedy led to the Rubaiyaat's final resting place - all are brought to life with keen assurance by this gifted and award-winning writer.

An exploration of myth, passion and loyalty from the Lebanon's troubled past, The Rock of Tanios is another superbly rich and rewarding novel from the author of Samarkand and Leo the African. Expertly controlling his multi-faceted narrative with prose of great beauty and power, Maalouf delves into the history of an extraordinary life: that of Tanois, child of the mountains.

Born in a Mesopotamian village in the third century, the son of a Parthian warrior, Mani grows up in a volatile and dangerous world. As battle rages for control over the Middle East between the great Roman and Persian empires, as Jews and Christians, Buddhists and Zoroastrians fight for ascendency, Mani- painter, mystic, physician and prophet- makes his way through the battlefields to preach to his incandescent doctrine of humility, tolerance and love, a doctrine that comes to be known as Manicheanism.A vivid glimpse of the ancient world in all its perfumed splendour and cruelty, an elegantly philosophical discourse on the fall of man, THE GARDENS OF LIGHT is a story of great beauty and resonance, exquisitely told.

'Should be prescribed reading in the Foreign Office and on the foreign desk of newspapers and the BBC' ALLAN MASSIE'Perfectly placed and wonderfully qualified to shed light on the pervasive sense that there is a cataclysmic battle in progress between civilisations and systems of belief' OBSERVER_________________In this brilliant exploration of the post-9/11 world, leading Lebanese novelist and intellectual Amin Maalouf sets out to understand the urgent challenges the world faces today.Instead of seeing the current disorder of the post-9/11 world as a 'clash of civilisations', Maalouf sees it as the 'exhaustion of two civilisations', a period in which humanity has reached its threshold of 'moral incompetence'.Disordered World is a plea by one of the major writers of our time for intelligence, tolerance and a sense of urgency in order that we develop a mature vision of our patrimony, our beliefs, our differences and the future of the planet which is our common home.

"I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages."Thus wrote Leo Africanus, in his fortieth year, in this imaginary autobiography of the famous geographer, adventurer, and scholar Hasan al-Wazzan, who was born in Granada in 1488. His family fled the Inquisition and took him to the city of Fez, in North Africa. Hasan became an itinerant merchant, and made many journeys to the East, journeys rich in adventure and observation. He was captured by a Sicilian pirate and taken back to Rome as a gift to Pope Leo X, who baptized him Johannes Leo. While in Rome, he wrote the first trilingual dictionary (Latin, Arabic and Hebrew), as well as his celebrated Description of Africa, for which he is still remembered as Leo Africanus.

Alec, a press artist with an impressive track record, settles on a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean. He has little contact with his neighbour, a solitary woman who wrote a cult book years ago, before withdrawing from public life. That is, until a gigantic power failure cuts them off from the rest of the world, and all of a sudden they find themselves dependent on each other. The world appears to be on the brink of nuclear war and the collapse of civilisation seems imminent. Just who are the mysterious friends of Empedocles, the gang of otherworldly protectors who came swooping in to interfere with the US presidency and cure all illness? Should we trust them? On the Isle of Antioch is a suspenseful novel with mythological roots, written in the dreamy language of the classics, by internationally renowned scholar Amin Maalouf.

In August 1099, Abu Saad al-Harawi, a judge from Damascus, stormed into the Caliph’s court in Baghdad, condemning its luxury while Muslims in Syria and Palestine were slaughtered by the Frankish invaders.With this charged scene, Amin Maalouf opens his exhilarating narrative history of two centuries of war that, nearly a millennium later, still cast their shadow on Arab-Western relations. The Crusaders’ first major triumph came with the sack of Jerusalem in 1099. After two days of carnage, not a single Muslim was left alive within the city walls. Yet it would take another fifty years before the Arab East mounted a united resistance.Maalouf recounts in gripping detail the fall of city after city: Antioch, betrayed from within; Tripoli, besieged and stripped of its priceless library; Ma’arra, where the Franj committed unspeakable atrocities. Against this devastation, he sketches vivid portraits of the Arabs who rose in response: Nur al-Din, the ‘Saint-King’ who forged the first united defence of Muslim nations, and Saladin, the reluctant leader who would ultimately reclaim Jerusalem.

The notion of identity - personal, religious, ethnic or national - is one that has given rise to heated passions and crimes throughout the history of mankind. What it is that makes each one of us unique and dissimilar to any other individual has been one of the fundamental questions of philosophy from Socrates to Freud.In this important series of reflections, the author, a Lebanese who now lives in France, where he is a well-known writer and commentator, considers how we define ourselves and how identity is understood in the world's different cultures.

A graceful story of love across an insuperable gulf and a powerful allegory for the conflict that has beset the Middle East for the last half century.To call your son Ossyane is like calling him Rebellion. For Ossyane’s father it is a gesture of protest by an excited Ottoman prince, for Ossyane himself it is a burdensome responsibility. At eighteen he leaves Beirut to study in Montpellier, far away from his father’s revolutionary aspirations for him. But it is 1938, and when war breaks out in Europe, Ossyane is drawn into the Resistance. His return to Beirut is a rebel hero’s welcome after all, and a joyful reunion with Clara, whom he first met in France. But if one war has brought the Jewish-Muslim couple together, another, much closer to home, is destined to separate Ossyane from the people and the world that he loves.

Having fled his homeland 25 years ago for France, Adam returns to the East for the first time to see a dying friend. Among the milk-white mountains of his homeland, the past soon catches up with him. His childhood friends have all taken different paths in life - and some now have blood on their hands. Loyalty, identity, and the clash of cultures and beliefs form the heart of this big and bold novel.

The United States is losing its moral credibility. The European Union is breaking apart. Africa, the Arab world, and the Mediterranean are becoming battlefields for various regional and global powers. Extreme forms of nationalism are on the rise. Thus divided, humanity is unable to address global threats to the environment and our health. How did we get here and what is yet to come? World-renowned scholar and bestselling author Amin Maalouf seeks to raise awareness and pursue a new human solidarity. In Adrift, Maalouf traces how civilisations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century, mixing personal narrative and historical analysis to provide a warning signal for the future.

Denna bok är en tankeväckande utforskning av de utmaningar som moderna civilisationer står inför. Maalouf navigerar genom de komplexa strömmarna av historia, identitet och globalisering och erbjuder djupa insikter i vår gemensamma mänskliga resa.