The Disoriented opens with a phone call from an "Old Country", about a dying friend who hasn't talked to Adam, the protagonist, for 25 years. Immediately, Adam drops everything and goes back "home" on a "pilgrimage" of a sort, to find pieces of his lost youth, as well as to try to get his old group of friends scattered across the world back together for one last time.

This book was nothing like I imagined. I expected a much heavier read, but I got a breezy, enjoyable fiction that wasn't lacking in substance. There were many beautiful paragraphs about heavy, important topics that are very close to my heart. Even though I'm not from the Middle East, I found so many similarities to the part of the world that I'm from. It is a region that went through a similar crisis and transformed very much like author's native Lebanon (which remains unnamed in this book).

The parts that describe leaving one's homeland and coming back to face the ones who never left were especially powerful. There is a particular dynamics between those who leave and those who stay, to quote E. Ferrante, that Amin Maalouf masterfully recreated in this novel. But, as I said, there is a certain effervescent quality in his writing, written by an old-world erudite without pretentiousness, that is rare in contemporary fiction. The book has such a beautiful humanist outlook. I found it very refreshing.

If I'd change anything it is the end, but the more I think about it, the more it is exactly as it should be. ( )

Una llamada inesperada lleva a Adam, un profesor árabe de Historia, a regresar a su tierra natal después de veinticinco años de exilio. Todo sigue igual, no ha pasado el tiempo por los lugares que frecuentó. Aquel "paraíso perdido" de la montaña blanca va asociado a los nombres de sus amigos de juventud, el Círculo de los Bizantinos, que pretendían cambiar el mundo y fueron ellos los que terminaron cambiando por una guerra que los separó y llevó a cada uno por distintos caminos. Pero quién es él para juzgarlos cuando vivió un exilio "dorado" mientras ellos se vieron abocados a una situación sin elección posible. Con la ayuda de la siempre bella y rebelde Semiramis, Adam intenta reunirslo.

Aquest llibre m'ha servit per aprendre un munt de coses! m'ha fet reflexionar sobre l'exili, la guerra i les actituds que podem prendre davant de cada cosa; sobre les justificacions, sobre la necessitat de comprensió, sobre com, davant del mateix fet, podem reaccionar ben diferentment. M'ha fet pensar molt en l'amistat, en el perdó... També en la parella (potser el que menys he entès ni agradat de la història).
Té aspecte que l'autor passi comptes amb el seu propi passat. ( )

Récit autobiographique trop mou, manque de soufle, de rythme, cela n'avance pas.
offert par Christine ( )

And this is why I keep picking up weird books that catch my eye in the library -- not all of them work for me but then I find gems like this one.

Adam had left his native Lebanon almost 25 years ago, fleeing a war which made his life as a Christian pretty miserable. Not that it was easy for anyone -- the Civil War was just starting and things were looking bad for everyone. And while some people chose to stay, a lot of people chose to leave all they knew and move away.

A lot happened in those 25 years - Adam became a historian, reconnected with some old friends who also fled the country, lost track of others but neither he, nor any of the others ever went home. Until the phone rang in his Paris apartment and a voice from the past called him to the sickbed of his friend Mourad. Despite Adam's rush, Mourad dies before he makes it there. So when the widow asks him to try to organize a meeting of all the old friends, the story is set in motion.

Maalouf choses to tell that story in two voices - a narrator and the diary (and letters) of Adam. We know that something is looming - the very beginning talks about something being 2 days before a disaster but we won't learn what until the very end. The first time when the diary made an appearance I almost groaned - it is an old trick to allow an author to "know" what the character thinks but as the story progresses, it becomes clear that the duality of the novel works in this as well. It is a story about the past and the future; about coming and going, about choices and memories.

And via the thoughts of Adam, the memories of everyone else and the letters Adam reads (and writes), two parallel stories emerge - one in the past, showing the start of a war that devastated a nation; the other of a now and here -- when people are still afraid to go home and where the war seems to be still raging - not on the streets, but in people's minds.

The novel is semi-autobiographical and I doubt that we will ever know which parts were real and which supplemented the reality. Just like his main character, Maalouf is a trained historian (it took me awhile to connect the name but then when I turned I saw his [The Crusades Through Arab Eyes] and that reminded me where I had heard his name before). And his Lebanon, the one he had to flee shows up under his pen here - both as it was and as it never was and as it never had a chance to be, with a taste of regret and sorrow. Each of the old friends had followed his path - and some of them had changed their paths more than once - a businessman turns into a monk, a man held for ransom decides to "adopt" his captors as parents . The circle of friends is a metaphor of the Lebanese society at the start of the Civil War - but even if they started as types, they are fully fledged and believable. And then the end shatters you.

And if this is not enough for one novel, you also get one of the best explanations of the bias blind spot I've read in awhile, a religions and history lesson (which sounds like everything but), a civil war 101 (from outside it is one war, inside it is a skirmish after skirmish and war after war with ever changing sides) and some of the best writing I had seen this year. The fact that the novel is 500+ pages and still feels too short (despite some middle parts that drag a bit) is a testament to a talent that I probably should have discovered much earlier. ( )