Amin Maalouf is a Lebanese-born French author who has lived in France since 1976. Although his native language is Arabic, he writes in French, and his works have been translated into over 40 languages.
Of his several works of nonfiction, The Crusades through Arab Eyes is probably the best known. He received the Prix Goncourt in 1993 for his novel The Rock of Tanios, as well as the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He is a member of the Académie française.
Maalouf was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and grew up in the Badaro cosmopolitan neighborhood, the second of four children. His parents had different cultural backgrounds. His father was from the Melkite Catholic community near the village of Baskinta in Ain el Qabou. His mother, Odette Ghossein, is Lebanese from the Metn Village of Ain el Kabou. She was born in Egypt and lived there for many years before coming back to Lebanon; she lived in France until her passing in 2021 at the age of 100 years old.
Maalouf worked as the director of An-Nahar, a Beirut-based daily newspaper, until the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, when he moved to Paris, which became his permanent home. Maalouf's first book, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1983), examines the period on the basis of contemporaneous Arabic sources.
Along with his nonfiction work, he has written four texts for musical compositions and numerous novels. His book Un fauteuil sur la Seine briefly recounts the lives of those who preceded him in seat #29 as a member of the Académie française.
Maalouf's novels are marked by his experiences of civil war and migration. Their characters are itinerant voyagers between lands, languages, and religions and he prefers to write about "our past."
