Don´t you believe in Providence? 

It was already after midnight when I went to bed. Yesterday I was watching a film on television: at the end of the Second World War, Russian soldiers had entered a Polish convent and had raped the nuns for several days.

Sigha  

«…le monde d´aujourd´hui ne ressemble pas à l´image que vous vous en faites! Ce nést pas vrai qu´il est dirigé par des forces obscures, omnipotentes!»

Fast food 

«De fait, nous sommes tous infinement plus proches de nos contemporains que de nos ancêtres. Serais-je en train d´exagérer si je disais que j´ai bien plus de choses en commun avec un passant choisi au hasard dans une rue de Prague, de Séoul, ou de San Francisco, que´avec mon propre arrière-gran-père?»

Hope's dream

     I have received news of Hope

     Like her name, Hope has always had the hope of leading a different life and in one way or another she has achieved it. Like you Fran or me. Like any. Only in the case of my sister much more accentuated. A life that runs parallel to what she actually lives.

The times of the planetary tribes

A magnificent painting by Rubens, Cain killing Abel (detail) appears on the cover of the book. Another allusion to confrontation and violence between brothers.

Everything has a beginning, a development and an end

It´s a small book that I found in one of those traveling stalls in a square in the city. For some time I had wanted to read the author of Leo Africanus, Samarkand and other works that are so well valued.

Particular cases

After a revision about his family tree: a Turk grandmother, an Egyptian Maronite grandfather, a poet and anticlerical grandfather and a great great grand uncle who was the first one in making a translation to Arabic of Moliere´s works... Amin Maalouf is convinced that ‘Humanity, whole it´s made by particular cases’ and that if one have to define his or her identity cannot only say ‘I am Arab’, ‘I am black’ or ‘I am Jewish’.