Origins, by the world-renowned writer Amin Maalouf, is a sprawling, hemisphere-spanning, intergenerational saga. Set during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth—in the mountains of Lebanon and in Havana, Cuba—Origins recounts the family history of the generation of Maalouf’s paternal grandfather, Boutros Maalouf. Maalouf sets out to discover the truth about why Boutros, a poet and educator in Lebanon, traveled across the globe to rescue his younger brother, Gabrayel, who had settled in Havana. What follows is the gripping excavation of a family’s hidden past. Maalouf is an energetic and amiable narrator, illuminating the more obscure corners of late Ottoman nationalism, the psychology of Lebanese sectarianism, and the dynamics of family quarrels. He moves with great agility across time and space, and across genres of writing. But he never loses track of his story’s central thread: his quest to lift the shadow of legend from his family’s past.  Origins is at once a gripping family chronicle and a timely consideration of Lebanese culture and politics.

Praise for Amin Maalouf  “What do you get when one of the Arab world’s greatest writers, a Prix-Goncourt-winning historical novelist, decides to write a memoir? A marvel. Amin Maalouf has given us the engrossing story of his grandfather, a prescient, remarkable man, as well as the story of his time and place—how the Middle East was formed, politically, geographically, historically, and not least, psychologically. An extraordinary achievement.”   —Rabih Alameddine, author of The Hakawati

“Maalouf’s novels re-create the thrill of childhood reading, that primitive mixture of learning about something unknown or unimagined . . .”   —Claire Messud, The Guardian

“One of the best European writers to have emerged in the last decade.”   —Kirkus Reviews

“Maalouf skillfully weaves the threads of contemporary history into his fictional narratives . . . In each of his books, he takes a historical figure about whom few facts are known, puts him in the context of this time and place and adds a myriad of invented but historically plausible details. The finished portraits have the intricate richness of oriental tapestries.”   —International Herald Tribune

“What is common to Maalouf's wide-ranging works—six of his novels have been translated into English—is his apparent belief that through examining and understanding a particular historical period we can gain a better understanding of our present time. Indeed, if you want to understand what's going on in the world at this moment, you could certainly do worse than to read Maalouf on the past.”   —Ian

Amin Maalouf was a journalist in Lebanon until the civil war in 1975, when he left for Paris with his family. His work has been translated into more than forty languages, and his books have won prestigious prizes, including the Prix Goncourt.

Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Distributor: MPS
Publication Date: 05-13-2008
Pages: 416
Measurements: 9.00in X 6.00in X 1.35in