Amin Maalouf: Leo The African

[saliotthomas]

Lebanon where should it belong,a bit of african,asia,and Europe.A crossroad.I choosed Europe because Maalouf wrote it in French.

"I am the son of the road , my country is a caravan and my life is the most unexpected of voyages. i belong to earth and to the god and it is to them that I will one day soon return"Amin Maalouf

This is caracteristic of his prose,musical and meaningfull.On reading it the first time,it feel like it was alway there,in you ,waiting to be reaveled.Like an old saying lost in your memorie.
The central personnage Hassan (later Leo) run from spain during the reconquista,and circle the mediterannne(Fez,Alexandria,Istanbul) to end up in Italie serving the popes Leon then Clement.The story is based on a true one,the journal of Leo the african.There is politics,phylosophie,adventure in this tale.The period is one of fabulous change in europeen/mediterranean history.
Certainly one of the best book i ever read,and i read it 5 or 6 times.
read it ,re-read it,my bible!!

[phoenixzeze]

Leaving "Al-Andalus" after the glory and safety is a pain in every Arab man's heart, it is the reminder of failure and defeat........
Many poems and novels remember it as a motif for Arab's defeat and loss.
Amin Malouf, whose life is in many ways similar to Hassan Alwazzan, suffered from that when he had to leave Lebanon to france because of the civil war, and in already having two language speaking parents (English and French), he suffered from his multible identities (just like Al-Wazzan). Feeling shattered and confused between these identities, They both had to reconcile into a more civilized and tolerant identity which can handle all kinds of life and deal with all identites and nationalities as their own.
I loved the novel just like you, one of my favourites.
The loss of Palestine, the loss of Lebanon and the Loss of Iraq, are all mentioned as the continuation of losing the glory and luxury in Al-Andalus or Andalusia.

I ll qoute this line from Leo Africanus :
"Lost home is just like the corpse of a relative, we burry it with solemnity, and believe in its immortality."

Great choice Thomas, hope everyone gets toread it.

[Bjorn]

Leo Africanus is, in a lot of ways, a good old-fashioned picaresque; Hasan is born in Granada in 1489, and when the muslims are kicked out of al-Andaluz he winds up stateless, homeless, and needing to survive (and help his family survive) by his wits. Does he travel all over the civilised world (the Mediterranean)? Of course he does. Does he meet most of the powerful people of his age, from kings to sultans to popes? Of course he does. Does he play a small but crucial part in historical events? You know he does.

At the same time, the novel shares a lot with some of my favourite 20th century examples of the genre - say, Eco's Baudolino or Bengtsson's The Long Ships, in that it's very consciously written for contemporary readers. He sneaks in discussion of current topics without ever making it too obvious, has the narrator not see the prejudices of his time while still making them stand out for the reader, while at the same time showing some things starting that still influence us today but have become so much a part of culture that we don't see them. Hasan (later Leo) lives through the end of one era and the beginning of a new one, sees the fall of Granada and the rise of the Ottoman empire, the departure of Columbus and the rise of the Habsburgs, the end of small-scale mediaeval culture and the beginning of a view of society, power and religion, that claim to want to return to something old while at the same time building something entirely new - both for bad and good. Maalouf creates a fully alive, entertaining character very much of his time, to show us things about how our own time came about.

[saliotthomas]

Thanks to remind me about Long ship Bjorn, i added it to my Christmass list from France, it's in two tomes and called Orm le rouge by Act Sud evidament !

I would like to add Miki Waltari ,Jean the Pilgrim, in those simmilar books.A bit more on the Eco side in that it's very well documented and one need lot of concentration reading it, less picaresque a you justly put it.