(Paperback)

Winner of the Prix de Maisons de la Presse, this novel tells the history of Omar Khayyam's "Rubaiyaat" from its creation by the poet in the 11th-century to its loss when the Titanic sank in 1912. It also describes Khayyam's life, including his love for the poetess Jahan.

(Paperback)

There are ninety-nine names for God in the Koran, is it possible that there is a secret one-hundredth name There are ninety-nine names for God in the Koran, and merely to know this most secret hundredth name will, Balthasar believes, ensure his salvation.

(Paperback)

This novel is based on the life story of the geographer Hasan as- Wazzan, who came to be known as Leo the African. It describes, amongst other things, how he fell in love with a Circassian princess, met the pirate Barbarossa, and went to the court of Salim the Grim.

(Paperback)

A lucid enquiry into the precise meaning of identity - that which makes each of us unique and dissimilar to any other individual. In this series of reflections, the author considers how we define ourselves and what identity has meant and continues to mean in different cultures.

(Paperback)

Ossyane, a young Lebanese man of both wealthy Ottoman and humble Armenian origin takes himself to Montpellier to study away from the burden of his liberal father's revolutionary ambitions. World War II breaks out, and Ossyane is drawn into the Resistance, where he meets Clara, who is Jewish.

(Paperback)

Mysterious beans are found on the market stalls of the East, to which ancient superstition lends the power of favouring the birth of male children. When a French entomologist obtains a few of these beans, he worries that the world has entered a critical phase of its history.

(Paperback)

Mani is born into a time of war - 3rd-century Mesopotamia. Despite being the son of a warrior, he becomes a painter, physician, mystic and prophet, preaching in the battlefields, a doctrine of humility, tolerance and love that becomes known as "Manicheanism".

(Paperback)

The 1993 winner of the Prix Goncourt. It is an historical novel which explores myth, passion and loyalty from Lebanon's troubled past, by tracing the life of Tanios, a child of the mountains, who one day in 1840 disappeared from the rock that now bears his name.