Deze epische saga, die zich afspeelt in het middeleeuwse Middellandse Zeegebied, verweeft de lotsbestemmingen van personages uit diverse culturen en geloven. Het verkent complexe relaties, politieke intriges en persoonlijke zoektochten naar identiteit in een tijd waarin het christendom, de islam en het jodendom elkaar kruisten. Reis door geschiedenis, passie en filosofische reflectie die u naar het hart van een van de meest turbulente tijdperken van de mensheid brengt. Het is een verhaal over liefde, oorlog en de zoektocht naar waarheid in een wereld in beweging.
Tariq Ali tells us the story of the aftermath of the fall of Granada by narrating a family saga of those who tried to survive after the collapse of their world. Ali is particularly deft at evoking what life must have been like for those doomed inhabitants, besieged on all sides by intolerant Christendom. "This is a novel that have something to say, and says it well." --"The""Guardian"
The Book of Saladin is the fictional memoir of Saladin, the Kurdish liberator of Jerusalem, as dictated to a Jewish scribe, Ibn Yakub. Saladin grants Ibn Yakub permission to talk to his wife and retainers so that he might present a full portrait in the Sultan’s memoirs. A series of interconnected stories follows, tales brimming over with warmth, earthy humor and passions in which ideals clash with realities and dreams are confounded by desires.At the heart of the novel is an affecting love affair between the Sultan’s favored wife, Jamila, and the beautiful Halina, a later addition to the harem. The novel charts the rise of Saladin as Sultan of Egypt and Syria and follows him as he prepares, in alliance with his Jewish and Christian subjects, to take Jerusalem back from the Crusaders. This is a medieval story, but much of it will be uncannily familiar to those who follow events in contemporary Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad. Betrayed hopes, disillusioned soldiers and unrealistic alliances form the backdrop to The Book of Saladin .
The history of Ottoman offical Iskander Pasha's family mirrors the decline of the empire they have served for hundreds of years
The year is 1153. The Normans are ruling Siqqiliya, but Arab culture and language dominate the island and the court. Sultan Rujari surrounds himself with Muslim intellectuals, several concubines, and an administration presided over by gifted eunuchs. This fourth novel in Tariq Ali's Islam Quintet is set in medieval Palermo, a Muslim city.
Palermo, rok 1153. Sycylię, znajdującą się pod panowaniem Rogera II – najbardziej wschodniego ze wszystkich chrześcijańskich władców – wciąż jeszcze licznie zamieszkują muzułmanie. Pomimo przychylności króla i jego oddania kulturze arabskiej, ich los na Sycylii jest przesądzony. Gdy staje się jasne, że współistniejące dotąd światy islamu i chrześcijaństwa nie mogą dłużej przetrwać w harmonii, Muhammad al-Idrisi, nadworny kartograf i przyjaciel władcy, musi opowiedzieć się po jednej ze stron. Rozdarty między bliskim przywiązaniem do sułtana a lojalnością wobec swoich współwyznawców, szuka zapomnienia w ramionach dawnej ukochanej. Okazuje się jednak, że odzyskanej miłości brak dawnego żaru, rodzinna idylla to fikcja a przed trudnymi wyborami nie można uciec.
The final volume in Tariq Ali's acclaimed cycle of historical novels.
"Night of the Golden Butterfly concludes the Islam Quintet - Tariq Ali's much lauded series of historical novels, translated into more than a dozen languages, that has been twenty years in the writing. Completing an epic panorama that began in fifteenth-century Moorish Spain, the latest novel moves between the cities of the twenty-first century, from Lahore to London, from Paris to Beijing. The narrator is rung one morning and reminded that he owes a debt of honour. The creditor is Mohammed Aflatun - known as Plato - an irascible but gifted painter living in a Pakistan where human dignity has become a wreckage. Plato, who once specialized in stepping back into the limelight, now wants his life story written. As the tale unravels we meet Plato's London friend Alice Stepford, now a leading music critic in New York; Mrs. Naughty Latif, the Islamabad housewife whose fondness for generals leads to her flight to the salons of intellectually fashionable Paris, where she is hailed as the Diderot of the Islamic world; and there's Jindie, the Golden Butterfly of the title, the narrator's first love. Interwoven with this chronicle of contemporary life is the turbulent history of Jindie's family. Her great forebear, Dù Wénxiù, led a Muslim rebellion in Yunnan in the nineteenth century and ruled the region from his capital Dali for almost a decade, as Sultan Suleiman. Night of the Golden Butterfly reveals Ali in full flight, at once imaginative and intelligent, satirical and stimulating."--Publisher description