This novel by Amin Maalouf—fierce and tender, playful and sober—invites more than one interpretation. It is a novel of a father's 'maternal' love for his daughter, and a novel of a man clinging to the 'femininity of the world'. It is a novel of a mysterious disease that kills women and preys on men, a novel about the division of our planet into a collapsing South and a grumbling North, and a novel of the terrifying encounter between the evils of fundamentalism and the wickedness of modernity. Perhaps this novel is, above all, a novel of the bewildering end of our era, casting an anxious look at the ever-present twenty-first century, which the author enigmatically calls 'The First Century After Beatrice'.

• Publishing House: Dar Al-Farabi for Publishing and Distribution
• Number of Pages: 212
• Year of Publication: 1997
• ISBN: 9789953718170
• Cover Type: Paperback