Adrift

The Lebanese-born French author offers a pensive, lyrical meditation on a dying worldA Camus for our time, Maalouf urges that civilization is 'fragile, shimmering, evanescent'and perhaps doomed. Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

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

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 BritainAmin Maalouf, a thinker with a novelist's imagination and a fine understanding of the broad sweep of historyMaalouf 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

StunningAdrift: How Our World Lost Its Way 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

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

Maalouf takes a long, often bleak look at a fragile world that feels in acute danger of breaking further apart, and at a fissiparous era where rage and impotence often seem to divide us more comprehensively than everit illuminates the puzzle of how a world that once seemed to be on a path towards progress, thanks to technology and scientific and medical advances, again risks being torn apart by the human forces. Caroline Wyatt, European Literature Network

Sharp intellect, tender heart. Maalouf is not only a brilliant storyteller and a wise thinker, he is one of our last remaining bridge builders between cultures, nations, tribes. Elif Shafak

Across an impressive body of work, Mr. Maalouf has mapped out the points of rupture and convergence between Europe and the Arab World. In Adrift, using his own intellectual and political autobiography, he traces several of the turning points that have helped shape both his personal life and our world today. The lucid elegance of his analysis of complex and often chaotic events, is the paradox of this book and is among the many gifts of its gentle, learned and inquisitive author. Hisham Matar

Magnificent, a book of sorrows for our times, a provocative and powerful elegy by one of the world's great writers. Philippe Sands, President of English PEN

With Adrift, Amin Maalouf again displays his supreme mastery in presenting the complexities of identity, history, and politics. A great observer of the human condition, and himself a product of multiple cultures, Maalouf offers a penetrating and personal account of the troubled state of our planet and its peoples. No book is more evocative at capturing the richness of our cultures but also their fragility and the dangers that menace us all today. Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University

Adrift is both an elegy for the Levant in which he grew up, and a reflection on the violent fragmentation and political malaise of globalised 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

The writer and scholar delves back into his own history to analyze the tragic consequences of the shock prophesied by Samuel Huntington. Le Figaro Magazine

With his consciously nurtured multiple identity, Maalouf is just the sort of interlocutor this period needs. He reaches deep into unmined seams of cultural history, scything elegantly through cliché and conventional models of received wisdom. Financial Times, on Disordered World

A marvelous, luminous piece of writing...The title is powerful, the book equally so. A marvelous, luminous piece of writingyou should read Adrift. Europe 1

True change is possible: Maalouf shows us possible ways forward in magnificent prose filled with wisdom. La Provence

Wonderful and terrifying. La Grande Librairie - France 5

A powerful voice. France Culture

Over rupture and conflict, Amin Maalouf has always preferred epics of encounters, beginnings, and connections. Le Point

An alarming report on the state of the world. Le Soir

Préface
• Print run 10,000 copies • Co-op available • Advance reader and digital reader copies • National TV and radio campaign • National print and online campaign • Social media campaign • Outreach to academic audiences

Auteur

AMIN MAALOUF was born in Beirut. He studied economics and sociology and then worked as an international reporter until the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975. Maalouf and his family decided to leave their country and settled in Paris in 1976, where he became editor in chief for the newspaper Jeune Afrique. He published his first book, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, in 1983. In 1993, The Rock of Tanios, his fifth novel, won the Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious literary award in France. Maalouf is a member of the Académie Française and in 2010 was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature for his entire oeuvre. His work has been translated into fifty languages and his most recent bestselling novel to be published in English is The Disoriented.

FRANK WYNNE is a literary translator, writer and editor based in London, UK. He has translated numerous French and Hispanic authors including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, Javier Cercas, and Virginie Despentes. His work has earned him numerous prizes including the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Scott Moncrieff Prize, and the Premio Valle Inclán. Most recently, his translation of Animalia won the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize. He edited the anthology Found in Translation collecting a hundred of the finest translated stories from around the world.

Texte du rabat

The bestselling author of The Crusades Through Arab Eyes traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century and now lack the solidarity to address global threats to humankind.

Résumé

*The bestselling author of *The Crusades Through Arab Eyes traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century and now lack the solidarity to address global threats to humankind.

Maalouf is a thoughtful, humane and passionate interlocutor. The New York Times Book Review The United States is losing its moral credibility. The European Union is breaking apart. Africa, the Arab world, and the Mediterranean are becoming battlefields for various regional and global powers. Extreme forms of nationalism are on the rise. Thus divided, humanity is unable to address global threats to the environment and our health. How did we get here and what is yet to come? World-renowned scholar and bestselling author Ami…