Adrift

“The Lebanese-born French author offers a pensive, lyrical meditation on a dying world…A Camus for our time, Maalouf urges that civilization is ‘fragile, shimmering, evanescent’—and perhaps doomed.” —Kirkus Reviews, *Starred Review*

“Across an impressive body of work, Mr. Maalouf has mapped out the points of rupture and convergence between Europe and the Arab World. In Adrift, using his own intellectual and political autobiography, he traces several of the turning points that have helped shape both his personal life and our world today. The lucid elegance of his analysis of complex and often chaotic events, is the paradox of this book and is among the many gifts of its gentle, learned and inquisitive author.” —Hisham Matar

“Maalouf takes a long, often bleak look at a fragile world that feels in acute danger of breaking further apart, and at a fissiparous era where rage and impotence often seem to divide us more comprehensively than ever…it illuminates the puzzle of how a world that once seemed to be on a path towards progress, thanks to technology and scientific and medical advances, again risks being torn apart by the human forces.” —Caroline Wyatt, European Literature Network 

“Sharp intellect, tender heart. Maalouf is not only a brilliant storyteller and a wise thinker, he is one of our last remaining bridge builders between cultures, nations, tribes.” —Elif Shafak

“Magnificent, a book of sorrows for our times, a provocative and powerful elegy by one of the world’s great writers.” — Philippe Sands, President of English PEN