One night, a phone rings in Paris. Adam learns that Mourad, once his closest friend, is dying. He quickly throws some clothes in a suitcase and takes the first flight out, to the homeland he fled twenty-five years ago. Exiled in France, Adam has been leading a peaceful life as a respected historian, but back among the milk-white mountains of the East his past soon catches up with him. His childhood friends have all taken different paths in life - and some now have blood on their hands. Loyalty, identity, and the clash of cultures and beliefs are at the core of this long-awaited novel by the French-Lebanese literary giant Amin Maalouf. 'Maalouf is a thoughtful, humane and passionate interlocutor.' - The New York Times Book Review 'A thoughtful, philosophically rich story that probes a still-open wound. An exile returns home to a land still torn apart by civil war 25 years afterward. Think The Big Chill in Beirut with some of the sex but little of the lightheartedness in Jeune Afrique editor-in-chief Maalouf's charged novel.' - Kirkus Reviews 'Having moved from Beirut to Paris with the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, the Prix Goncourt-winning Maalouf (The Rock of Tanios) deftly lets us know how the changes wrought by time's passage really feel, especially when one has traded continents and cultures.' - ALA Booklist 'Amin Maalouf gives us a perfect look at the thoughts and feelings that can lead to emigration. One can only be impressed by the magnitude and the precision of his introspection.' - Le Monde des Livres 'A great work, which explores the wounds of the exile and the compromises of those who stay.' - L'Amour des Livres