The Gardens of Light

Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade

In this stunning novel, Assia Djebar intertwines the history of her native Algeria with episodes from the life of a young girl in a story stretching from the French conquest in 1830 to the War of Liberation of the 1950s. The girl, growing up in the old Ro

A Sister to Scheherazade

Isma and Hajila are both wives of the same man, but they are not rivals.Isma - older, vibrant, passionate, emancipated - is in stark contrast to the passive, cloistered Hajila. In alternating chapters, Isma tells her own story in the first person, and the

Leo Africanus

"Leo Africanus is a beautiful book of tales about people who are forced to accept choices made for them by someone else...It relates, petically at times and often imaginatively, the story of those who did not make it to the New World."--New York Times Boo

Orígenes

'We are, and always will be, wanderers who have lost their way . . .' When a trunk of family letters gives Amin Maalouf the opportunity to trace his past, he finds himself - having never before asked questions - transfixed by the stories of his ancestor

The Rock of Tanios

Tanios was a child of the mountains of Lebanon in the 1880s when the Egyptian Pashas were struggling against Ottoman domination and the British and French plotted with and against each other. Amin Maalouf's novel, The Rock of Tanios, begins with a recolle

Balthasar's Odyssey

An ambitious novel set in 1665, the tumultuous eve of the Year of the Beast, when the world was supposed to come to an end. Antiquarian merchant and sage Balthasar must go on an odyssey in search of a book that holds the secret of God's hundredth name, wh

Samarkand

Accused 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 genuis, the judge decides to spare him and gives him instead a small, bla

The Crusades Through Arab Eyes

The author has combed the works of contemporary Arab chronicles of the Crusades, eyewitnesses, and often participants. He retells their story and offers insights into the historical forces that shape Arab and Islamic consciousness today.

الأم أدريانا

في بلد تستعرُّ فيه الحرب، تحمل أدريانا، الشابة الشغوفة، إثر تعرُّضها للاغتصاب. تحاول شقيقتها أن تقنعها بألا تحتفظ بالطفل، فتجيبها أدريانا: