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About
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 gripping 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.
Origins is at once a gripping family chronicle and a timely consideration of Lebanese culture and politics.
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 gripping 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.
Origins is at once a gripping family chronicle and a timely consideration of Lebanese culture and politics.
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Reviews
"This memoir illuminates the way we make narrative out of pieces of fact and rumor and also serves as a revealing glimpse into the complexities of a part of the world to which nationhood came late and where borders remain unusually porous and slippery . . . A journey well worth taking, an elegant meditation on mortality and our relationship to the past."
The Washington Post
"In this riveting and intriguing memoir, he describes himself and his family as a rather nomadic clan, without deep emotional ties to place or religious affiliation…The result is an excellent family saga that also works as a mystery and even as a discourse on the political culture of Lebanon. Maalouf is a gifted writer; he has a knack for maintaining dramatic tension as he reveals his efforts to uncover his family's secrets, layer by layer, as his search extends over three continents. This is an intensely personal and compelling story."
Jay Freeman, Booklist
"Maalouf's narrative gains in emotional immediacy from its lack of the polished presentation often found in memoirs…His kins' reactions to tragedies and triumphs both personal and universal add to the book's vibrant texture and tone. A shimmering portrait of a clan molded by history and personal whim."
Kirkus Reviews