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The
2004 Award
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Balthasar's
Odyssey by
Amin Maalouf
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Nominated by:
Publisher
of Nominated Edition:
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| the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors |
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ABOUT
THE BOOK
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| Months
before the dawn of the apocalyptic "Year of the Beast" in 1666,
Balthasar Embriaco, a Levantine of Genoese stock and a merchant in curios,
sets out with his two nephews, his clerk and Marta, a young woman abandoned
by her husband, on an adventure that will take him across the breadth of
the then civilised world. His urgent quest is to track down a copy of one
of the rarest and most coveted books ever printed, a volume he once possessed,
but which he sold in a moment of weakness. Known by the title "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. But will he achieve his desire? Balthasar's journey takes him and his companions to Constantinople and thence to Smyrna and Aleppo, before they embark for the Isle of Chios and sail through the Mediterranean, eventually arriving in London just before the outbreak of the Great Fire. |
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
| Amin Maalouf was formerly director of the leading Beirut daily, an-Nahar, and the editor of Jeune Afrique. His fiction, in English translation, includes Leo the African, The Rock of Tanios, which won the Prix Goncourt, Samarkand, The Gardens of Light and Ports of Call. Among his non-fiction are the celebrated essay, On Identity, and The Crusades through Arab Eyes. |
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