Origins A Memoir [Paperback]

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: Why did Boutros, a poet and educator in Lebanon, travel across the globe to rescue his younger brother, Gebrayel, who had settled in Havana?

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.

Originsis at once a gripping family chronicle and a timely consideration of Lebanese culture and politics.

AminMaaloufwas 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.

This memoir illuminates the way we make narrative out of pieces of fact and rumor and also serves as a revealing glimpse into the complexities of a part of the world to which nationhood came late and where borders remain unusually porous and slippery . . . A journey well worth taking, an elegant meditation on mortality and our relationship to the past. The Washington Post

In this riveting and intriguing memoir, he describes himself and his family as a rather nomadic clan, without deep emotional ties to place or religious affiliation&The result is an excellent family saga that also works as a mystery and even as a discourse on the political culture of Lebanon. Maalouf is a giftel“r