Origins: A Memoir, by Amin Maalouf, translated by Catherine Temerson
The Lebanese Amin Maalouf is best known as a writer of historical novels in French, such as Le Rocher de Tanios, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1993. Yet before moving to Paris during the Lebanese civil war of the mid-1970s, Maalouf was a newspaper journalist in Beirut like his father before him. These two elements in his character, romancier and reporter, come together in this fine essay in family history.
First published in French by Grasset as Origines in 2004, it is based on a trunk of family letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, receipts and title deeds preserved by the author’s mother in the family house in a part of Mount Lebanon known as the Northern Metn. In piecing together these documents, and quizzing old and far-flung relations, Maalouf casts a clear, provincial sidelight on certain important processes of the early-20th-century Levant: the death throes of the Ottoman empire, the emigrations of Syrians and Lebanese to the Americas and Australia, the Great War, the rise of Arab and Turkish nationalism and the French mandate over Syria and Lebanon.
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