Origins
Subtitle: a memoir
By: Amin Maalouf
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2008
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780330442480
Subjects: Lebanese Authors; Families; Family; Biography
Description: "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." "Maalouf sets out to discover the truth about why Boutros, a poet and educator in Lebanon, traveled across the globe to rescue his younger brother, Gabrayel, who had settled in Havana. What follows is the excavation of a family's hidden past. 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."--BOOK JACKET.