A graceful story of love across an insuperable gulf and a powerful allegory for the conflict that has beset the Middle East for the last half century.

To call your son Ossyane is like calling him Rebellion. For Ossyane`s father it is a gesture of protest by an exiled Ottoman prince, for Ossyane himself it is a burdensome responsibility. At eighteen he leaves Beirut  to study in Montpellier, far away from his father`s revolutionary aspirations for him. But it is 1938, and when war breaks out in Europe, Ossyane is drawn into the Resistance. His return to Beirut is a rebel hero`s welcome after all, and a joyful reunion with Clara, whom he first met in France. But if one war has brought the Jewish-Muslim couple together, another, much closer to home, is destined to separate Ossyane from the people and the world that he loves.

"A beautiful work of fiction"

- Pierre Robert Leclercq, Le Mende

"Maalouf`s novels recreate the thrill of childhood reading, that primitive mixture of learning about something unknown or unimagined and forgetting utterly about oneself. His is a voice which Europe cannot afford to ingore."

- Claire Messud, Guardian