The final volume of the Carthage Trilogy unfolds across two timelines. In 1943, at the height of the Second World War, a Nazi commando makes its way to a village near Gabès in search of a hideout once used by the occultist Aleister Crowley — and of a terrible secret he is rumoured to have buried during his 1904 journey through Tunisia. In 2018, Captain Soufiane is drawn into a chain of seemingly unconnected murders after nuclear material is discovered on Tunisian soil, and finds himself forced to excavate ancient history to understand what is happening in the present.
At the centre of it all lies the secret of the Barcids, concealed in a poem that the general Hannibal is said to have written to his father, Hamilcar — a secret whose lineage reaches back through the survivors of Carthage, the Phoenicians, the Knights Templar, and even King Solomon.
Sami Mokaddem's award-winning conclusion to his Carthage Trilogy is a historical-scientific thriller that braids real events and deep history into a propulsive chase across Tunisia's past and present.