Samarcande

In eleventh-century Persia, the poet and astronomer Omar Khayyam writes his quatrains — the Rubaiyat — into a single precious manuscript. Around him swirls the turbulent history of the Seljuk Empire: his friendship and rivalry with the vizier Nizam al-Mulk, his encounters with Hassan Sabbah and the Order of the Assassins, and a nine-year love affair with Jahan, a poet of the Samarkand court that ends in the violence of conquest.

Centuries later, a young American, Benjamin Omar Lesage, becomes obsessed with recovering the lost original of the Rubaiyat. His search carries him into the heart of the Persian Constitutional Revolution of the early twentieth century — and toward a fateful Atlantic crossing in April 1912.

Samarkand is Amin Maalouf's acclaimed dual-timeline meditation on poetry, faith, power, and the fragility of the written word. Originally published in French in 1988, it won the Prix Maison de la Presse and remains one of the author's best-loved works.