Occupation Novelist Language French | Name Amin Maalouf Role Author | |
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Parents Ruchdi Maalouf, Odette Maalouf Education Saint Joseph University, Academie francaise, College Notre Dame de Jamhour Nominations Prix Goncourt des Lyceens, Man Booker International Prize, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Books In the Name of Identity, Samarkand, Leo Africanus, The Crusades Through, The Rock of Tanios Similar People Ibrahim Maalouf, Kaija Saariaho, Jean‑Christophe Rufin, Kahlil Gibran, Nassim Maalouf | ||
Euronews interview amin maalouf
Amin Maalouf (Arabic: أمين معلوف; born 25 February 1949) is an award-winning 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. 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.
Contents
- Euronews interview amin maalouf
- Les matins de france culture amin maalouf
- Biography
- Awards
- Fiction
- Non fiction
- Librettos
- References
Les matins de france culture amin maalouf
Biography
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 mother was born in Egypt, where her father, a Maronite Christian married to a woman born in Turkey, had gone for work. His Lebanese father was from the Melkite Greek Catholic community near the village of Baskinta in Ain el Qabou. Maalouf's mother was a staunch Catholic who insisted on sending him to Collège Notre Dame de Jamhour, a French Jesuit school. He studied sociology at the Francophone Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut.
He worked as the director of the Beirut-based daily newspaper An-Nahar 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, examined the period on the basis of contemporaneous Arabic sources.
Besides novels, he has written four texts for musical compositions and several works of non-fiction, of which Crusades through Arab Eyes is probably the best known.
Awards
In 1993, Maalouf was awarded the Prix Goncourt for his novel The Rock of Tanois ("Le rocher de Tanios"), set in 19th-century Lebanon. In 2010 he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature for his work, an intense mix of suggestive language, historic affairs in a Mediterranean mosaic of languages, cultures and religions and stories of tolerance and reconciliation.
He was elected a member of the Académie française on 23 June 2011 to fill seat 29, left vacant by the death of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Maalouf is the first person of Lebanese heritage to receive that honor.
Maalouf has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), the American University of Beirut (Lebanon), the Rovira i Virgili University (Spain), and the University of Évora (Portugal).
In 2016, he won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for "Cultural Personality of the Year", the premier category with a prize of 1 million dirhams.
Fiction
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".
Non-fiction
Librettos
All Maalouf's librettos have been written for the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho.