This urge to resuscitate the history of Samarkand and, above all, to follow in Khayyam's footsteps has prompted Lesage's adventures in France, Turkey, and Persia before he becomes persona non grata in Iran following his complicity in a regicide. Samarkand traces the itinerary of both Khayyam and Lesage, the former's formative years in Persia and his political and scientific affiliations with the institutions of Samarkand, and the latter's painful search for the Samarkand Manuscript, in which Khayyam chronicles the history of Samarkand, its rulers, empire-builders, and common people. Lesage, an American of mixed Huguenot and English ancestry who wants to fulfill an irresistible passion for the East in quest of the Rubaiyaat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. The narrator, whom we thought anonymous and completely detached from the world of Samarkand, suddenly reveals himself late in the book as Benjamin O. The former helps him reproduce the history of Samarkand and evoke the memories of a glamorous Oriental past, without being constrained by factuality or authenticity the latter provides the apparently fictitious narrative with a sense of history, a simulacrum of historicity engendered by real names, dates, and places. In re-creating the world of Samarkand, the author relies on two techniques: fictionalization and historicization. Though the back cover designates it as a work of fiction, the book transcends the genre to embrace history, politics, culture, and travel. Retrieved from Īmin Maalouf's Samarkand first appeared in French in 1989 but had to wait seven years before Russell Harris rendered it into English. MLA style: 'Samarkand.' The Free Library.

Samarkand maalouf