‘We are, and always will be, wanderers who have lost their way . . .’

A prolific novelist and acclaimed historian of the Middle East, Amin Maalouf had never before taken the time to trace his own ancestry. But on the sudden death of his father he decides to address this, and, given a trunk of letters and the opportunity to sort them, begins to find the keys to his past.

Like many Levantine families, Maalouf’s is ethnically and religiously diverse, and the figures he encounters are maverick, visionary, strong-willed, far-flung. Starting in the mountains of Lebanon, their story is yet one of exile: of brothers separated, of dramatic emigrations, and of revolutions espoused in the dying years of the Ottoman Empire and beyond.

Taking Maalouf from Lebanon to Cuba, this memoir is a fascinating insight into the nature and fate of a nomadic family. Above all, it is a meditation on the profound extent to which blood ties can represent homeland, and to which curiosity, guilt, love and pride can echo through the generations.

'What do you get when one of the Arab world's greatest writers, a Prix-Goncourt-winning historical novelist, decides to write a memoir? A marvel' Rabih Alameddine