Publisher Description

At the dawn of the 20th century, a young Lebanese explorer leaves the Levant for the wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace in Tripoli and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan. The protagonist soon takes charge of this hoard of architectural fragments, ferrying the dismantled landmark through Sudan, Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, attempting to return to his native Beirut with this moveable real estate. Along the way, he encounters skeptic sheikhs, suspicious tribal leaders, bountiful feasts, pilgrims bound for Mecca and T.E. Lawrence in a tent. This is a captivating modern-day Odyssey in the tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux.Charif Majdalani, born in Lebanon in 1960, is often likened to a Lebanese Proust. He teaches French literature at the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut. Moving the Palace is the winner of the prestigious François Mauriac Prize from the Académie Française as well as the Prix Tropiques.

Author Biography

Charif Majdalani, born in Lebanon in 1960, is often compared to a Lebanese Proust. Majdalani lived in France from 1980 to 1993 and now teaches French literature at the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut. The original French version of his novel Moving the Palace won the 2008 François Mauriac Prize from the Académie Française as well as the Prix Tropiques.Edward Gauvin has received prizes and fellowships including those awarded by PEN America, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fulbright program. His work has won the John Dryden Translation Prize and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award. He has translated over 200 graphic novels.

Review

"A Middle Eastern heart-of-darkness tale that flows like a dream, occasionally turning nightmarish, but is always rendered with a hypnotic quality beautifully captured in Edward Gauvin's elegant translation ... Majdalani's novels are much praised in the Francophone world, and with good reason. His seductive prose twists and turns, deftly matching hallucinatory content with form."—The New York Times Sunday Book Review"Renders the complex social landscape of the Middle East and North Africa with subtlety and finesse ... Yet one doesn't need to care about the region's history, or its present-day contexts, to enjoy 'Moving the Palace' ... brio and Mr. Majdalani's richly textured prose are reason enough."—The Wall Street Journal"Charming and gently humorous … Majdalani's writing sparkles … Those looking for an enjoyable and brisk literary adventure will be very satisfied."—Publishers Weekly"It is one of the novel's pleasures that its story takes place against pivotal moments of the half-mythic history of northern Africa and the Middle East … Another reliable source of delight is Majdalani's writing, constantly alive and entrancing in Edward Gauvin's translation."—World Literature Today"This utterly charming and, yes, moving novel takes us on a journey … and the result is a victory of human ingenuity and a joyous picaresque. VERDICT Beautiful fun that also gives a deeper sense of Middle East history."—Library Journal"This reader was dazzled! ... The language is playfully enchanting—the translator did a marvelous job. The landscape is almost visible, and the sense of heat and sand and the effort of traveling the desert nearly tangible. Moving the Palace provides a delightful armchair ramble through a long-gone time and place."—Historical Novel Society"Charif Majdalani has a ripping yarn to tell and tells it with a raconteur's bravura. Transporting, wholly engaging, deeply moving. This book is why I travel and why I read."—Andrew McCarthy, award-winning director, actor, and author of Just Fly Away and The Longest Way Home"This wildly entertaining novel ... leave[s] us with a renewed sense of wonder."—NC State University Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies"Moving the Palace is an eloquent, captivating excursion through a Middle East history that is more relevant today than ever. Majdalani is a major storyteller and a novelist with conscience who writes the past with transnational awareness."—Rawi Hage, author of De Niro's Game and Cockroach"On one side the desert, infinite, immensely varied, splendid. On the other, the courage, obstinacy, folly, violence, and dreams of men. Through this fascinating adventure, Charif Majdalani constructs one of the most beautiful epics I've ever read."—Antoine Volodine, author of Minor Angels and Naming the Jungle"This novel provides entrée into the extraordinary fictional work of Charif Majdalani; with each book he lays out magnificent, terrible and true history through family genealogy, hopes and dramas. And each time Majdalani renews our vision."—Patrick Deville, author of Plague and Cholera"In language of extreme classicism—he is often compared to a Lebanese Proust—Majdalani imposes his rhythm, slow and mesmerizing, to bring us in step with his story … Throughout this epic tale he intimately weaves together the grand history of his country and his family, mixing fiction and reality in language of infinite sensuality."—L'Express"An odyssey in the manner of The Thousand and One Nights."—Le Figaro littéraire"An extraordinary book somewhere between adventure story, picaresque novel, fairytale and chronicle of a bygone era."—Neue Zürcher Zeitung"Recounts the immense folly and excess of an explosive colonial episode—forgotten, deadly, torturous and involving weapons traffic and hidden treasures. Something that would have excited the adventurer Rimbaud had he survived his injuries …. Flaubert … would have loved this imaginary depiction of a real historical event."—Le Point"The reader remains captivated long after having completed this epic and comic novel that allows one to perceive in the ineffable silence of the desert the attachment of a man to his homeland."—Le Monde"Full of stirring epic images, trenchant anecdotes celebrating the virtues of movement … Majdalani has a way of merging time and place that makes his writing convey the concerns of men, their illusions, the sounds of the desert and the rhythm of marches and halts."—Le Matricule des Anges

Promotional

Promotions on Goodreads, Edelweiss, and all social media.Promotion through French cultural institutes around the country.Excerpts in national print magazines.Interviews in print and online magazines.

Review Quote

"Renders the complex social landscape of the Middle East and North Africa with subtlety and finesse ... Yet one doesn't need to care about the region's history, or its present-day contexts, to enjoy 'Moving the Palace' ... brio and Mr. Majdalani's richly textured prose are reason enough." -- The Wall Street Journal "Charming and gently humorous ... Majdalani's writing sparkles ... Those looking for an enjoyable and brisk literary adventure will be very satisfied." -- Publishers Weekly "This utterly charming and, yes, moving novel takes us on a journey ... and the result is a victory of human ingenuity and a joyous picaresque. VERDICT Beautiful fun that also gives a deeper sense of Middle East history." -- Library Journal "Charif Majdalani has a ripping yarn to tell and tells it with a raconteur's bravura. Transporting, wholly engaging, deeply moving. This book is why I travel and why I read." --Andrew McCarthy, award-winning director, actor, and author of Just Fly Away and The Longest Way Home "Moving the Palace is an eloquent, captivating excursion through a Middle East history that is more relevant today than ever. Majdalani is a major storyteller and a novelist with conscience who writes the past with transnational awareness." --Rawi Hage, author of De Niro's Game and Cockroach "On one side the desert, infinite, immensely varied, splendid. On the other, the courage, obstinacy, folly, violence, and dreams of men. Through this fascinating adventure, Charif Majdalani constructs one of the most beautiful epics I've ever read." --Antoine Volodine, author of Minor Angels and Naming the Jungle "This novel provides entre into the extraordinary fictional work of Charif Majdalani; with each book he lays out magnificent, terrible and true history through family genealogy, hopes and dramas. And each time Majdalani renews our vision." --Patrick Deville, author of Plague and Cholera "In language of extreme classicism--he is often compared to a Lebanese Proust--Majdalani imposes his rhythm, slow and mesmerizing, to bring us in step with his story ... Throughout this epic tale he intimately weaves together the grand history of his country and his family, mixing fiction and reality in language of infinite sensuality." --L'Express "An odyssey in the manner of The Thousand and One Nights." --Le Figaro littraire "An extraordinary book somewhere between adventure story, picaresque novel, fairytale and chronicle of a bygone era." --Neue Zrcher Zeitung "Recounts the immense folly and excess of an explosive colonial episode--forgotten, deadly, torturous and involving weapons traffic and hidden treasures. Something that would have excited the adventurer Rimbaud had he survived his injuries .... Flaubert ... would have loved this imaginary depiction of a real historical event." --Le Point "The reader remains captivated long after having completed this epic and comic novel that allows one to perceive in the ineffable silence of the desert the attachment of a man to his homeland." --Le Monde "Full of stirring epic images, trenchant anecdotes celebrating the virtues of movement ... Majdalani has a way of merging time and place that makes his writing convey the concerns of men, their illusions, the sounds of the desert and the rhythm of marches and halts." --Le Matricule des Anges

Competing Titles

The Masque of Africa V.S. Naipaul 9780307454997 16 Vintage 2010 The Automobile Club of Egypt Alaa al Aswany 9780307947314 17 Vintage 2016 Alexandrian Summer Yitzhak Gormezano Goren 9781939931207 16 New Vessel 2015

Excerpt from Book

Chapter One This is a tale full of mounted cavalcades beneath great wind-tossed banners, of restless wanderings and bloody anabases, he thinks, musing on what could be the first line of that book about his life he''ll never write, and then the click-clack of waterwheels on the canal distracts him; he straightens up in his wicker chair and leans back, savoring from the terrace where he''s sitting the silence that is a gift of the desert the desert spreads in its paradoxical munificence over the plantations, the dark masses of the plum trees, the apricot trees, the watermelon fields, and the cantaloupe fields, a silence that for millennia only the click-clack of waterwheels has marked with its slow, sharp cadence. And what I think is, there may not be apricot orchards or watermelon fields, but that most definitely is the desert there, in the background of the photo, the very old photo where he can be seen sitting in a wicker chair, cigar in hand, gazing pensively into the distance, in suspenders, one leg crossed over the other, with his tapering mustache and disheveled hair, the brow and chin that make him look like William Faulkner, one of the rare photos of him from that heroic era, which I imagine was taken in Khirbat al Harik, probably just after he''d come from Arabia, though in fact I''m not at all sure, and really, what can I be sure of, since apart from these few photos, everything about him from that time is a matter of myth or exaggeration or fancy? But if I am sure of nothing, then how should I go about telling his story; where shall I seek the Sultanate of Safa, vanished from the memory of men but still bound up with his own remembrances; how to imagine those cavalcades beneath wind-tossed banners, those Arabian tribes, and those palaces parading by on camelback; how to bring together and breathe life into all those outlandish, nonsensical particulars uncertain traditions have passed down, or vague stories my mother told me that he himself, her own father, told her, but which she never sought to have him clarify or secure to something tangible, such that they reached me in pieces, susceptible to wild reverie and endless novelistic embroidering, like a story of which only chapter headings remain, but which I have waited to tell for decades; and here I am, ready to do so, but halting, helpless, drifting into daydream as I imagine he drifted on the verandah of that plantation in Khirbat al Harik, watching flash past in memory that which I will never see, but which I shall be forced to invent? Yet his story, at the start, hardly differs from those of any other Lebanese emigrants who, between 1880 and 1930, left their homeland to seek adventure, fame, or fortune in the world. If many of them met with success thanks to trade and commerce, there were some whose stories retained a more adventurous note, like those who braved the Orinoco to sell the goods of civilization to peoples unknown to the world, or those who were heroes of improbable odysseys in the far Siberian reaches during the civil wars in Russia. He was one of these, who came back at last with his eyes and head full of memories of escapades and follies. Tradition has it that he left Lebanon in 1908 or ''09. He could''ve headed for the U.S. or Brazil, as did most, or for Haiti or Guyana, as did the most courageous, or for Zanzibar, the Philippines, or Malabar, as did the most eccentric, those who dreamed of making fortunes trading in rare or never-before-seen wares. Instead, he chose the most thankless land known at the time, and headed for the Sudan. But back then, the Sudan proffered immense opportunities to a young Lebanese man who was Westernized, Anglophone, and Protestant to boot. And he was these three things, the child of an ancient family of Protestant poets and litt

Description for Sales People

Adventure fans and history buffs.

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