1949 -
Prominent Lebanese novelist and journalist now living in and a citizen of France.
Amin Maʿlouf (also Maʿluf) was born in Beirut in a Catholic family of journalists and writers. His father, Rushdi Maʿlouf, was and is still considered one of Lebanon's major publicists. Following his schooling, Maʿlouf joined al-Nahar, a major Lebanese daily, and traveled to several countries. In 1977, because of the violence brought by the Lebanese Civil War, Maʿlouf fled with his family to Paris. Maʿlouf is a prolific novelist and writer, and most of his fiction is based on historical events. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. His first book, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, has become an important reference, especially after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Among his other novels are The Gardens of Light (1991) and Leo the African (1986), a narrative of the life and travels of a geographer who lived in sixteenth-century Spain and who, after roaming Africa and the Mediterranean, ended by living in Fez, Morocco. In 1993, Maʿlouf was awarded the prestigious French literary award Le Prix Goncourt for The Rock of Tanios. In this book, based in nineteenth-century Lebanon, Maʿlouf details the lives of a Lebanese shaykh and his out-of-wedlock son. The novel is filled with local myths, romance, international intrigues, and political games. His more recent novels include The First Century after Beatrice (1992) and Balthasar's Odyssey (2000). In 1998, Maʿlouf published an essay entitled Les identités meutrieres (translated as On Identity), which draws on his multilayered identity to explain how fluid identities have become in the age of globalization. In 2000, he wrote an opera libretto, L'amour de loin (Love from Afar) based on a twelfth-century love story set in Tripoli (Lebanon) during the Crusades. The opera was performed in Salzburg (2000) and Paris (2001); the music was composed by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho.
— GEORGE IRANI
