 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Saladin grants Ibn Yakub permission to talk to his wife and retainers so that he might portray a complete picture of him in his memoirs. A series of nterconnected stories follow, tales brimming over with warmth, earthy humour and passions in which ideals clash with realities and dreams are confounded by desires. At the heart of the novel is an affecting love affair between the Sultan's favoured wife, Jamila, and the beautiful Halima, a later addition to the harem.
The novel charts the rise of Saladin as Sultan of Egypt and Syria and follows him as he prepares, in alliance with his Jewish and Christian subjects, to take Jerusalem back from the Crusaders. It is a medieval story, but much of it will be cannily familiar to those who follow events in contemporary Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. Betrayed hopes, disillusioned soldiers and unreliable alliances form the backdrop to The Book of Saladin.
This is the second of a planned quartet of historical novels depicting the confrontation between Islamic and Christian civilisations. The first, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, recounted the story of the fall of Islam in Spain. It has been translated into several languages and was awarded the Archbishop San Clemente del Instituto Rosalia de Castro Prize for the Best Foreign Language Fiction published in Spain in 1994.
“Fiercely lyrical. Weaving political intrigue, gay and straight love, betrayal, cross-dressing, rape, assassination and crimes of passion, Ali's tale ripples with implicit parallels to our age.” — Publishers Weekly
“An arresting tapestry of Saladin's times, interweaving imaginative reconstruction, fictionalised history and Arabian Nights-style erotic fantasy.” — Independent
“Ali overturns demonising stereotypes of Salah-al-Din, portraying instead the 'barbarian' Western invaders. Whether depicting erotically charged harem intrigue or siege warfare, The Book of Saladin is an entertaining feat of revisionist storytelling.” — Sunday Times
“Tariq Ali's novel creates an authentic-seeming court, full of intrigue, dominated by a man who is charismatic yet not a hero of romance . . . It gives a feeling of how it must have been to be in the company of a great but harried genius and also paints a pluralistic and tolerant Islam, a world of philosophical inquiry as well as military prowess.” — New Statesman
Tariq Ali is a writer and film-maker. He has written over a dozen books on world history and politics and plays for both stage and screen. The Book of Saladin is his fourth novel. The next novel in his Islam Quartet, The Stone Woman, is also published by Verso.
Cloth: October 1998
Paper: September 1999
280 pages
Cloth
ISBN-13: 978 1 85984 834 0
£17 / US$25 / CAN$33
Paper
ISBN-13: 978 1 85984 231 7
£10 / US$16.95 / CAN$21
Also available:
Bush in Babylon:
The Recolonisation of Iraq
The Clash of Fundamentalisms
Street-fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree
The Stone Woman
A Sultan in Palermo
Pirates of the Caribbean