Amin Maalouf

Balthasar's Odyssey
- Amin Maalouf
There are ninety-nine names for God in the Koran, is it possible that there is a secret one-hundredth name?

In this tale of magic and mystery, of love and danger, Balthasar's ultimate quest is to find the secret that could save the world.

Before the dawn of the apocalyptic 'Year of the Beast' in 1666, Balthasar Embriaco, a Genoese Levantine merchant, sets out on an adventure that will take him across the breadth of the civilised world, from Constantinople, through the Mediterranean, to London shortly before the Great Fire.

Balthasar's urgent quest is to track down a copy of one of the rarest and most coveted books ever printed, a volume called 'The Hundredth Name', its contents are thought to be of vital importance to the future of the world. There are ninety-nine names for God in the Koran, and merely to know this most secret hundredth name will, Balthasar believes, ensure his salvation.

Ports Of Call

Amin Maalouf

On Identity

Amin Maalouf

Amin Maalouf's fiction includes Leo the African, Rock of Tanios, which won the 1993 Prix Goncourt, Samarkand and Ports of Call. He is also the author of an acclaimed scholarly work, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, as well as the much admired essay, 'On Identity'. Barbara Bray has twice won the Scott-Moncrieff Prize, as well as the French-American Foundation Prize, for her translations. These include The Lover by Marguerite Duras, The Concert by Ismail Kadare, and George Sand's letters in Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence.