Adrift: How Our World Lost Its Way

Product Description

The bestselling author of The Crusades Through Arab Eyes traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century and now lack the solidarity to address global threats to humankind.

“Maalouf is a thoughtful, humane and passionate interlocutor.” ― The New York Times Book Review The United States is losing its moral credibility. The European Union is breaking apart. Africa, the Arab world, and the Mediterranean are becoming battlefields for various regional and global powers. Extreme forms of nationalism are on the rise. Thus divided, humanity is unable to address global threats to the environment and our health. How did we get here and what is yet to come? World-renowned scholar and bestselling author Amin Maalouf seeks to raise awareness and pursue a new human solidarity. In
Adrift, Maalouf traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century, mixing personal narrative and historical analysis to provide a warning signal for the future.

Review

“The Lebanese-born French author offers a pensive, lyrical meditation on a dying world…A Camus for our time, Maalouf urges that civilization is ‘fragile, shimmering, evanescent’―and perhaps doomed.” ―Kirkus Reviews, *Starred Review*
“Adrift is an insightful and profoundly disturbing interpretation of recent world history―and our uncertain future.” ―The Guardian
“In a year of pandemic, social breakdown, race riots and, for those in Beirut, exploding ammonium nitrate, you do not have to be a perpetual doomsayer to politely disagree. Now writers do not ask for whom the bell tolls, they simply assume it tolls for everyone and focus on the question: why? One worthy stab at an answer comes from a source underappreciated in Britain―Amin Maalouf, a thinker with a novelist’s imagination and a fine understanding of the broad sweep of history…Maalouf does not offer a clear solution other than the obvious; that we should listen to each other more. He does not preach, and perhaps therein lies our only way forwards to tackle our shared future with the grace and understatement that is the hallmark of his own writing.” ―The Times
“Stunning…Adrift: How Our World Lost Its Way traces modern events that have resulted in severe geopolitical breakdown, leaving the world ‘utterly incapable of marshalling the solidarity necessary to deal with a threat of this magnitude’―the climate emergency.” ―Globe and Mail
“Adrift is so movingly written and so all-encompassing that it would behoove all intelligent humans, and those who are aiming to understand the connections between seemingly disconnected events, to get this book, read it, absorb it and reflect on the ideas the author puts forward about the collapse of civilizations, the decline of civility and the nature of empires.” ―New York Journal of Books
“An unavoidably personal and sometimes contentious account, it’s born of a post-War liberal worldview which has been unfashionable for some time but still holds much of value.” ―The Herald Scotland
“Maalouf takes a long, often bleak look at a fragile world that feels in acute danger of breaking further apart, and at a fissiparous era where rage and impotence often seem to divide us more comprehensively than ever…it illuminates the puzzle of how a world that once seemed to be on a path towards progress, thanks to technology and scientific and medical advances, again risks being torn apart by the human forces.” ―Caroline Wyatt, European Literature Network
“Sharp intellect, tender heart. Maalouf is not only a brilliant storyteller and a wise thinker, he is one of our last remaining bridge builders between cultures, nations, tribes.” ―Elif Shafak
“Across an impressive body of work, Mr. Maalouf has mapped out the points of rupture and convergence between Europe and the Arab World. In Adrift, using his own intellectual and political autobiography, he traces several of the turning points that have helped shape both his personal life and our world today. The luci