Amin Maalouf

[saliotthomas]

www.aminmaalouf.org

Amin Maalouf was my favorite author until Andrei Makine came along to challenge his position.Funny is they both are foreigner who choose to write in French,lived in Paris and they both have the same initial !,(and i sure they both do plenty of thing likewise but so do i).
Amin Maalouf write beautifully,there is in his prose something of the arabian saying dug is this poetry(that i know very little of,a guess)and the mastery of an Europeen scholar.It maybe as to see with the particular statue of Libanon,this middle east country with so strong Europeen ties.Some of his sentences are so musical,so true in the images that they come to you a unburied evindence of the world beauty.He give to poetry the dicretion of prose,and to prose the magificence fo poetry(sorry for this one,got carried away)

He is very well known in France,and the last of his book i bought in a aerport(that hard proof).He won the Goncourt price for the rock of Tanios in 1993

The best of his book is Leo the african.Base one the carnet de voyage of the original Hasan al-Wazzan.In the 16th century the odysse of an Arabe from Grenade,exile because of the reconquista to Fez in Morocco,then Egytpe,Constatinople,Rome.This story of a peregrination of this man of letters around the mediterranean is made wonderfull by the epoque.The 16th century been so rich in changes,birth of the ottoman empire,fall of arabian dominance in Spain and north african,Italian renaissance,fall of Rome,luther...One of the most instructive book i ever read and with a tone so light that it felt like a walk.I read it 6 or 7 times.

The Crusades Through Arab Eyes is a non fiction and also a favorite of mine.Read it 8 or 9 times.I had it in audio,gave it to my father who was staying in his car before work waiting for the end of a particular story.Fascinating.(did you know that the crusaders,our ancestors,where cannibals?)


The First Century after Beatrice ISBN 0-7043-7051-4
Leo Africanus ISBN 1-56131-022-0
Rock of Tanios (Prix Goncourt 1993) ISBN 0-8076-1365-7
Samarkand (first published 1988 titled 'Samarcande') ISBN 1-56656-293-7
Gardens of Light ISBN 1-56656-248-1
Ports of Call (first published 1996 titled 'Les échelles du Levant') ISBN 1-86046-890-X
Balthasar's Odyssey ISBN 1-55970-702-X


Maybe Obooki read the Rock of Tanios been part of his Goncourt project?

Amin Maalouf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[titania7]

Thomas,
Remembering your love for Maalouf, I ordered his book, The First
Century After Beatrice, from the library. Was this a good choice?

I don't remember them having a copy of Leo The African, which is
clearly your favorite of Maalouf's novels.

Currently, I don't have time to read The First Century After Beatrice--
at least not for a few weeks. However, your opinion of it (if, that is,
you've read it) would be very much appreciated and valued.

Thanks.

Best wishes,
Titania


"The supreme value is not the future but the present.
The future is a deceitful time that always says to
us, 'Not yet,' and thus denies us. The future is
not the time of love; what man truly wants he
wants now. Whoever builds a house for future
happiness builds a prison for the present."
~Octavio Paz

[Stewart]

In tribute to Amin Malouf scooping the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, let's bump the thread on him...

...if only to quote the Wikipedia entry which provides a bit of a biographical introduction to him:

Amin Maalouf, born 25 February 1949 in Beirut, is a Lebanese author. Although his native language is Arabic, he writes in French, and his works have been translated into many languages. He received the Prix Goncourt in 1993 for his novel The Rock of Tanios (English translation of, Le Rocher de Tanios).

Maalouf is the second of four children. His parents' families were from the Lebanese mountain village of Ain el Kabou. His parents married in Cairo in 1945, where Odette, his mother, was born of a Maronite Christian father from the village, who had left to work in Egypt, and a mother born in Turkey. Amin's father, Ruchdi, was from the Melkite Greek Catholic community. One of his ancestors was a priest whose son converted to become a Presbyterian parson. The parson's son (Maalouf's grandfather) was a "rationalist, anticlerical, probably a freemason, and refused to baptise his children". While the Protestant branch of the family sent their children to British or American schools, Maalouf's mother was a staunch Catholic who insisted on sending him to a French JesuitUniversité Saint-Joseph). school. He studied sociology at the French University in Beirut ( community. One of his ancestors was a priest whose son converted to become a


He worked as the director of the Beirut-based daily newspaper An-Nahar Lebanese civil war in 1975, when he moved to Paris, which became his permanent home. until the start of the

[stujallen]

where is a good place to start with amin maalof ?

[Bjorn]

Originally Posted by stujallen

where is a good place to start with amin maalof ?

I've only read two of his - The Crusades Through Arab Eyes and Leo Africanus - and would very much recommend both.

[Daniel del Real]

Next on the list, The Rock of Tanios