Adrift: How Our World Lost Its Way - Paperback

by Amin Maalouf (Author), Frank Wynne (Translator)

The bestselling author of The Crusades Through Arab Eyes traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century and now lack the solidarity to address global threats to humankind.

"Maalouf is a thoughtful, humane and passionate interlocutor." -- The New York Times Book Review

The United States is losing its moral credibility. The European Union is breaking apart. Africa, the Arab world, and the Mediterranean are becoming battlefields for various regional and global powers. Extreme forms of nationalism are on the rise. Thus divided, humanity is unable to address global threats to the environment and our health. How did we get here and what is yet to come? World-renowned scholar and bestselling author Amin Maalouf seeks to raise awareness and pursue a new human solidarity. In Adrift, Maalouf traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century, mixing personal narrative and historical analysis to provide a warning signal for the future.

Front Jacket

The United States is losing its moral credibility. The European Union is breaking apart. Africa, the Arab world, and the Mediterranean are becoming battlefields for various regional and global powers. Extreme forms of nationalism are on the rise. Thus divided, humanity is unable to address global threats to the environment and our health. How did we get here and what is yet to come? World-renowned scholar and bestselling author Amin Maalouf seeks to raise awareness and pursue a new human solidarity. In Adrift, Maalouf traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century, mixing personal narrative and historical analysis to provide a warning signal for the future. "With his consciously nurtured multiple identities, Maalouf is just the sort of interlocutor this period needs. He reaches deep into unmined seams of cultural history, scything elegantly through cliche and conventional models of received wisdom." Financial Times, on Disordered World "True change is possible: Maalouf shows us ways forward in magnificent prose filled with wisdom." La Provence "A marvelous, luminous piece of writing." Europe 1

Author Biography

AMIN MAALOUF was born in Beirut. He studied economics and sociology and then worked as an international reporter until the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975. Maalouf and his family decided to leave their country and settled in Paris in 1976, where he became editor in chief for the newspaper Jeune Afrique. He published his first book, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, in 1983. In 1993, The Rock of Tanios, his fifth novel, won the Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious literary award in France. Maalouf is a member of the Académie Française and in 2010 was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature for his entire oeuvre. His work has been translated into fifty languages and his most recent bestselling novel to be published in English is The Disoriented.

FRANK WYNNE is a literary translator, writer and editor based in London, UK. He has translated numerous French and Hispanic authors including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, Javier Cercas, and Virginie Despentes. His work has earned him numerous prizes including the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Scott Moncrieff Prize, and the Premio Valle Inclán. Most recently, his translation of Animalia won the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize. He edited the anthology Found in Translation collecting a hundred of the finest translated stories from around the world.