Book description
In this brilliant exploration of the post-9/11 world, leading Lebanese
novelist and intellectual Amin Maalouf sets out to understand how we
have arrived at such disorder. He explores three different but related
aspects of disorder: intellectual (manifested in an unleashing of
statements on identity that allow no possibility of peaceful
co-existence or debate), economic and financial (that is exhausting the
earth's resources), and climatic (the result of turning a blind eye to
the consequences of rampant industrialization). Instead of seeing the
current disorder of the post-9/11 world as 'a clash of civilisations'
Maalouf sees it as the 'exhaustion of two civilisations', a period in
which humanity has reached its threshold of 'moral incompetence'. Islam
and the West have theoretical coherence, he says, but in practice each
betrays its true ideals: the West is unfaithful to its own enlightenment
values, which has discredited it in the eyes of the people to whom it
has introduced democracy by force; while Islam finds itself condemned to
a headlong rush into radicalism. These symmetrical disorders are only
some of the elements in a global disorder that requires humanity as a
whole to take responsibility for its future and face up to the urgent
tasks such as climate change and the global financial crisis that
threaten us all. Disordered World is a plea by one of the major writers
of the last twenty years for intelligence, tolerance and a sense of
urgency in order that we develop an adult vision of our patrimony, our
beliefs, our differences and the future of the planet which is our
common home. 'Maalouf writes for a general rather than a specialist
readership' Le Monde 'Rarely has the tipping point between Arab
nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism after the Six Day War been
explained so clearly. ... Maalouf is a Christian, but he wants to speak
out in defence of Muslims; he is from the Middle East, but he still has
great hope in Europe; he is Lebanese, but he is a great critic of group
interests; he is a critic, yet he constantly voices his faith in
humanity' L'Express Amin Maalouf was born in Lebanon in 1949. A
journalist and director of the daily newspaper An-Nahar, he lived in
Beirut until the start of the civil war in 1975, when he left for Paris
with his family. His life straddles East and West - he reads and writes
in Arabic, but chooses to publish in French. He refuses to be limited to
one identity, either Arab or French, but chooses actively to be both
simultaneously. A novelist, essayist and memoirist, he has won
prestigious prizes, including the Prix Goncourt for his novels and other
books which have been translated into more than forty languages. He
lives in Paris. George Miller is the translator of No and Me. He is also
a regular translator for Le Monde diplomatique's English-language
edition, and the translator of Conversations with my Gardener by Henri
Cueco and Inside Al-Qaeda by Mohammed Sifaoui.
