# Amin Maalouf

Amin Maalouf (French:; Arabic: أمين رشدي بطرس طنّوص معلوف Arabic pronunciation:; born 25 February 1949) is a Lebanese-born French author who has lived in France since 1976. Although his native language is Arabic, he writes in French, and his works have been translated into over 40 languages.
Of his several works of nonfiction, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes is probably the best known. He received the Prix Goncourt in 1993 for his novel The Rock of Tanios, as well as the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He is a member of the Académie française and was elected its Perpetual Secretary on 28 September 2023.

## Background

Maalouf was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and grew up in the Badaro cosmopolitan neighbourhood, the second of four children. His mother, of Turkish ancestry, was from Egypt, and his father was a Melkite Catholic> from the village of Machrah.
He is the uncle of trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf.

### Career

Maalouf worked as the director of An-Nahar, a Beirut-based daily newspaper, until the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, when he moved to Paris, which became his permanent home. Maalouf's first book, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1983), examines the period based on contemporaneous Arabic sources.
Along with his nonfiction work, he has written four texts for musical compositions and numerous novels.
His book Un fauteuil sur la Seine briefly recounts the lives of those who preceded him in seat #29 as a member of the Académie française.

## Awards

Maalouf has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), the American University of Beirut (Lebanon), the Rovira i Virgili University (Spain), the University of Évora (Portugal), and the University of Ottawa (Canada).
In 1993, Maalouf was awarded the Prix Goncourt for his novel The Rock of Tanios (French: Le rocher de Tanios), set in 19th-century Lebanon. In 2004, the original, French edition of his Origins: A Memoir (Origines, 2004) won the Prix Méditerranée.
In 2010 he received the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award for Literature for his work, an intense mix of suggestive language, historic affairs in a Mediterranean mosaic of languages, cultures and religions and stories of tolerance and reconciliation. He was elected a member of the Académie française on 23 June 2011 to fill seat 29, left vacant by the death of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Maalouf is the first person of Lebanese heritage to receive that honour.
In 2016, he won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for "Cultural Personality of the Year", the premier category with a prize of 1 million dirhams (approx. US$272,000). In the same year, the University of Venice Ca' Foscari awarded him the Bauer-Incroci di civiltà prize for fostering cultural dialogue between civilizations.
In 2020, he was awarded the National Order of Merit by the French government. He was given the honour by President Emmanuel Macron.
In 2021, Maalouf was elected a Royal Society of Literature International Writer.

## Honours and decorations

| Country | Honour |
| Finland | Knight First class of the Order of the Lion of Finland |
| France | Officier of the Legion of Honour |
| France | Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit |
| France | Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres |
| Lebanon | Grand Cordon of the National Order of the Cedar |
| Monaco | Officier of the Order of Cultural Merit (Monaco) |

## Works
### Fiction

Maalouf's novels are marked by his experiences of civil war and migration. Their characters are itinerant voyagers between lands, languages, and religions and he prefers to write about "our past".
| Original | Original | English translation | English translation |
| 1986 | Léon l'Africain | 1992 | Leo Africanus, translated by Peter Sluglett. ISBN 1-56131-022-0 |
| 1988 | Samarcande | 1994 | Samarkand, trans. Russell Harris. ISBN 1-56656-293-7. |
| 1991 | Les jardins de lumière | 1996 | The Gardens of Light, trans. Dorothy S. Blair. ISBN 1-56656-248-1. |
| 1992 | Le Premier siècle après Béatrice | 1993 | The First Century after Beatrice, trans. Dorothy S. Blair. ISBN 0-7043-7051-4. |
| 1993 | Le Rocher de Tanios | 1994 | The Rock of Tanios, trans. Dorothy S. Blair ISBN 0-8076-1365-7. |
| 1996 | Les Échelles du Levant | 1996 | Ports of Call, trans. Alberto Manguel. ISBN 1-86046-890-X. |
| 2000 | Le Périple de Baldassare | 2002 | Balthasar's Odyssey, trans. Barbara Bray. ISBN 1-55970-702-X. |
| 2012 | Les Désorientés | 2020 | The Disoriented, trans. Frank Wynne. ISBN 978-1-64286-058-0. |
| 2020 | Nos frères inattendus | 2023 | On the Isle of Antioch, trans. Natasha Lehrer. ISBN 978-1-64286-134-1. |

### Non-fiction

| Original | Original | English translation | English translation |
| 1983 | Les Croisades vues par les Arabes | 1986 | The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. ISBN 0-8052-0898-4 |
| 1998 | Les Identités meurtrières | 2000 | In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, translated by Barbara Bray. ISBN 0-14-200257-7. |
| 2004 | Origines | 2008. | Origins: A Memoir, translated by Catherine Temerson. ISBN 978-0-374-22732-6. |
| 2009 | Le Dérèglement du monde | 2011 | Disordered World: Setting a New Course for the Twenty-First Century, translated by George Miller. ISBN 978-1-60819-584-8 |
| 2019 | Le Naufrage des civilisations | 2020 | Adrift: How Our World Lost Its Way, translated by Frank Wynne. ISBN 978-1-64286-075-7 |
| 2023 | Le Labyrinthe des égarés. L’Occident et ses adversaires | - | ISBN 9782246830436 |

### Librettos

All Maalouf's librettos have been written for the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho.
* 2000. L'Amour de loin ('Love from Afar'), opera
* 2003. Adriana Mater, opera
* 2006. La Passion de Simone, oratorio
* 2010. Émilie, monodrama