Details

ISBN-10: 1642861340
ISBN-13: 9781642861341
Publisher: World Editions
Publish Date: 12/05/2023
Dimensions: 7.90" L, 5.00" W, 0.70" H

On the Isle of Antioch

Translator: Natasha Lehrer

Paperback

Price: $18.99

Overview

In this dystopian novel about total collapse by internationally renowned author Amin Maalouf, a complete blackout hits a small island with only two solitary inhabitants, who suddenly have to depend on each other.

“Lebanese-born French author Maalouf delivers an elegant portrait of a dying
world. A beguiling, lyrical work of speculative fiction by a writer of
international importance.” –Kirkus Reviews, *Starred Review*

Alec, a press artist with an impressive track record, settles on a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean. He has little contact with his neighbor, 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 civilization 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.

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Reviews

Praise for On the Isle of Antioch

"Lebanese-born French author Maalouf delivers an elegant portrait of a dying world. A beguiling, lyrical work of speculative fiction by a writer of international importance." –Kirkus Reviews, *Starred Review*

"A timely novel that captures the concerns of
today and is an excellent addition to any library's collection of dystopian
fiction." –Jacqueline Snider, The Library Journal

"A marvelous parable." –Le Figaro littéraire

"In this work of speculative fiction, remarkable men lay claim to Ancient Greece and heal an ailing mankind." –L'Obs

"The latest novel of the Franco-Lebanese author isn't just a novel. It's a warning to all passengers: we're moving in a dangerous direction. A cry of alarm, but also of hope." –Le Soir

"One of his most powerful novels." –La Provence

"Maalouf revives the Greek miracle as an idea but avoids Manicheism. He stimulates reflection without ever impinging on the pleasure of reading a thriller." –Le Point

"Amin Maalouf has concocted a complex, nerve-racking thriller with mythological roots." –Livres Hebdo Le Magazine

"Without pontificating, Amin Maalouf broaches very important topics, throughout all the delicious suspense." L'Express

"The latest Amin Maalouf is an intricate thriller, which can be read on various levels, resonating with the unprecedented crisis our civilization is facing." –L'Orient-Le Jour

"A philosophical thriller in the form of a cry of alarm. ... Mixing speculation and philosophical reflection, Amin Maalouf has written a captivating humanist story, troubling in the way it resonates with our time." –Midi Libre

"Between dystopia and philosophical tale, Amin Maalouf imagines, in a world on the brink of self-destruction, salvation thanks to the fraternity of a small number." La Croix


Praise for Amin Maalouf

"Maalouf is a thoughtful, humane and passionate interlocutor." –New York Times Book Review

"Amin Maalouf is one of that small handful of writers, like David Grossman and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who are indispensable to us in our current crisis." –New York Times

"Maalouf's fiction offers both a model for the future and a caution, a way towards cultural understanding and an appalling measure of the consequences of failure. His is a voice which Europe cannot afford to ignore." –The Guardian

"At this time of fundamentalist identity seekers, Amin's is a voice of wisdom and sanity that sings the complexity and wonder of belonging to many places. He is a fabulist raconteur; he tells vastly entertaining adventure stories that are also deeply philosophical." –ARIEL DORFMAN, author of Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile

"Amin Maalouf seems to follow Flaubert in looking at the East, but he centres the narrative differently: it's the Orient telling itself. You learn about the multiplicity of cultures, their openness and permeability; that the boundaries between religions are not as hard and fast as we've been led to believe." –AAMER HUSSEIN, author of 37 Bridges

"Amin Maalouf, one of the Arab world's most influential writers, weaves extraordinary tales in his novels, mixing historical events, romantic love, fantasy, and imagination. Yet at the core of all these well-crafted works lies a deep element of philosophical and psychological inquiry into the nature and condition of contemporary man." –American University of Beirut


Praise for Adrift

"Stunning ... Adrift traces modern events that have resulted in severe geopolitical breakdown, leaving the world 'utterly incapable of marshalling the solidarity necessary to deal with a threat of this magnitude'–the climate emergency." Globe and Mail

"In a year of pandemic, social breakdown, race riots and, for those in Beirut, exploding ammonium nitrate, you do not have to be a perpetual doomsayer to politely disagree. Now writers do not ask for whom the bell tolls, they simply assume it tolls for everyone and focus on the question: why? One worthy stab at an answer comes from a source underappreciated in Britain–Amin Maalouf, a thinker with a novelist's imagination and a fine understanding of the broad sweep of history ... Maalouf does not offer a clear solution other than the obvious; that we should listen to each other more. He does not preach, and perhaps therein lies our only way forwards to tackle our shared future with the grace and understatement that is the hallmark of his own writing." –The Times

"Adrift is so movingly written and so all-encompassing that it would behoove all intelligent humans, and those who are aiming to understand the connections between seemingly disconnected events, to get this book, read it, absorb it and reflect on the ideas the author puts forward about the collapse of civilizations, the decline of civility and the nature of empires." –New York Journal of Books

"An unavoidably personal and sometimes contentious account, it's born of a post-War liberal worldview which has been unfashionable for some time but still holds much of value." –The Herald Scotland

"Adrift is an insightful and profoundly disturbing interpretation of recent world history–and our uncertain future." –The Guardian

"Adrift is both an elegy for the Levant in which he grew up, and a reflection on the violent fragmentation and political malaise of globalized capitalism. In Maalouf's portrait, the world in which Covid-19 made its calamitous appearance is disoriented and dangerously unequal, fragmented into identity-based groups, at war with one another yet all beholden to the market." –The London Review of Books


Praise for The Disoriented

"A thoughtful, philosophically rich story that probes a still-open wound." –Kirkus Reviews

"A powerful and nostalgic current of lost paradise and stolen youth." –Huffington Post

"A great, sensitive testimony on the vulnerability of the individual in an age of global migration." –STEFAN HERTMANS, author of War and Turpentine and The Convert


More Reviews

Details

ISBN-10: 1642861340
ISBN-13: 9781642861341
Publisher: World Editions
Publish Date: 12/05/2023
Dimensions: 7.90" L, 5.00" W, 0.70" H
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