I requested this book on net galley because the description intrigued me. However, from the beginning of the book I was immediately dissatisfied. So, the book is written in journal form after a major power outage. It gave the feeling of the pandemic that we all know too well. My one issue is that at the beginning I knew more about what was going on because of the description of the book rather than the Alec telling us what was going on in his "journal entries". I thought this novel was going to be a much deeper exploitation of political issues. Instead, our main character Alec gave me the impression he was one of those people that prepares for the apocalypse and is a conspiracist.

Couldn't really get into it that much, was a very tiring read for me. But still tried my best to complete.

Thank you Netgalley for a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.
My first Amin Maalouf and definitely not my last. I have to give props the translator, Natasha Lehrer. I didn't have any of the issues I usually do with translated fiction.
This was a kind of post-apocalyptic, pandemic feeling type story. The prose was unique given that this book is written in diary form. It was very atmospheric and visually enticing. You could feel the chill and warmth throughout.
At the end of it all, this reminded me of Popisho and most of Emily St. John Mandel's books.
I will for SURE be picking up more books by this author. Maybe in Arabic too?

This was a really beautiful book that had me wanting more. Amin Maalouf is an exceptional talent and I think this books is a rare gem. Loved it.

The premise of this was so good but unfortunately it did not deliver. The blurb suggests the narrator and the novelist are the only souls trapped on this island and so have to turn to each other for company, but actually their island connects to another which is much fuller and then, on top of all that, our narrator just so happens to have a direct line to his bestie who’s the US President’s right hand man? Oh BUT THEN it turns out that actually all the action is on this random little island, and so the President’s right hand man actually ends up asking our narrator for info(!). Now I get that that makes the book interesting or whatever, but I thought this was a book about just a quiet normal guy who wanted to live in solitude suddenly having to talk to his neighbour in the midst of a crisis.

But there’s more!! The book is OBSESSED with “the Athenian miracle” and being all like “Classical Athens was the pinnacle of civilisation and we want to recreate that”, and that actually makes me want to throw up for sooo many reasons, not least because it is SIMPLY NOT TRUE.

So, all in all, I was very disappointed.

I felt really quite conflicted about this novel ,there were some elements I really enjoyed but ultimately I found it a highly confusing reading experience
The novel starts routinely and realistically setting up an island location off the coast of the uk where only 2 people live their neighbours can only be reached by boat or by a causeway only accessible at low tide .An unexplained episode happens which cuts off all contact with the outside world .You assume as reader that you will eventually have the episode explained .
Gradually you learn of some individuals who are in some way supernatural who gain control of world order
I was confused were these people aliens or was there a supernatural explanation .I found the politics unbelievable and was generally rather lost whilst I read
There is a very sudden ending which I found highly unsatisfactory.The novel left me feeling rather stupid and cross with myself for not following the story more easily consequently I couldn’t really recommend it to anyone
I read an early copy on NetGalley uk the book is published in the uk On 5th December 2023 by World Editions
This review will be published on Goodreads NetGalley uk and on my book blog bionicsarahsbooks.Wordpress.Com

Thank you to netgalley, the publishers and author for the opportunity to read this ARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

It’s with a heavy heart that I am DNFing this ARC (@ 15%) I wanted to like to so bad, but alas the greatest downfall of an author is their writing. The writing is not demonstrative, it’s a “I did this, then I did this” formula. For some, this may be a great story, but it took me out of the story. I feel very lucky I was able to read this book before it was published, and It’s unfortunate it wasn’t for me.

I found the book quite gripping. In the first few chapters you think you're about to read an apocalypse novel, albeit an original one - the protagonist on his Caribbean (or wherever) island with just one drunken, anti-social novelist for company as the world ends. Then you realise that it's not the apocalypse - or at least not quite yet - in fact the world's been sort of taken over by a benevolent cult of ancient Greeks. I've always had a soft spot for ancient Greeks, so this in particular kept me reading...and reading.

Apart from being a page turner, the book raised some interesting questions about how we would behave if a benevolent, but immeasurably superior, culture chose to intervene in our affairs. As the protagonist says at one point, it's like the Spanish meeting up with Montezuma, or any number of 'native' cultures encountering advanced European people with guns. Except that in this case Americans are the 'natives', and the incoming powers that be are actually better than us in every way.

So, a thought-provoking page-turner - I'd happily read another Maalouf novel.

About twenty years ago, a friend had lent me Amin Maalouf’s Balthasar’s Odyssey. Two decades later, the details of the plot escape me, but I still recall being entranced by a novel which was at once a wildly gripping narrative and an intellectually satisfying work. I hadn’t read any Maalouf since then, so I had great expectations about his latest novel, On the Isle of Antioch. Its protagonist and narrator is “Alec Zander”, a lawyer turned cartoonist who, as a result of a strange quirk of family history, owns the greater part of Antioch, a remote island in the Atlantic. The island is linked to a the larger neighbouring island through a causeway which appears at low tide. Otherwise, Alec is all alone, except for Ève, a reclusive and misanthropic female author who owns another part of Antioch, and who has settled there to escape attention, following the publication of a cult work of fiction in her youth. One day, there is a massive power failure, accompanied by a breakdown in internet and radio communication. Alec suspects that a long-feared nuclear armageddon has arrived. It eventually results that behind these unprecedented events there is a mysterious and highly-advanced society of individuals who call themselves the Friends of Empedocles, and who appear to be inspired by the values of the Ancient Greeks. The Friends of Empedocles declare that they come in peace. But can they be trusted and does their advent signal the collapse of civilisation as we know it?

Certainly, the novel’s premise is promising. Here is Amin Maalouf, a veritable and venerable man of letters, taking on a hoary trope of dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction and turning it into a philosophical meditation on the state of humanity. Yet, I found the novel ultimately underwhelming. Let me try to explain why.

So, first, the plot. Maalouf goes for a first person narration, which certainly makes matters more exciting and “immersive”. But for the purposes of plot development, the novel’s protagonist needs to double as a third-person omniscient narrator. To justify this, Maalouf relies on a series of extraordinary coincidences. Alec lives on a remote island. Yet, his only neighbour turns out to be the “muse” of the Friends of Empedocles, one of his friends is a member of the shadowy group and, to top it all, the closest advisor of the President of the US happens to be an old companion from University, such that, ironically Alec becomes probably the best-informed person in the world about the cataclysmic developments. In my view, even the most “speculative” of “speculative fiction”, needs to follow an internal logic to be credible, and sometimes this novel simply requires too much suspension of disbelief.

The novel borrows popular and genre fiction, and I’m perfectly fine with that. There’s action, dystopian thrills, and some romance. But the narrative arc seems to fizzle out. Without revealing too many details of the plot, there is some closure from the perspective of the narrator, but many questions remain unanswered. In other words, whoever reads this merely for the thrill of the tale will likely end up disappointed.

As for its philosophical ruminations, the novel does raise some interesting queries about contemporary society, the decline of civilisation, the diffident encounters between cultures. But these themes are alluded to without being considered too deeply.

Don’t get me wrong. I can’t say I disliked the novel. After all, Maalouf on a bad day is still better than most. But equally I cannot shake off a sense that On the Isle of Antioch could have been much more.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2023/05/on-isle-of-antioch-by-amin-maalouf.html

Thanks to World Editions and NetGalley for supplying and ARC of Amin Maalouf's 'On the Isle of Antioch' for review.

To my embarrassment I had not previously heard of Maalouf but I was intrigued by the cover, title, and blurb of 'On the Isle of Antioch.'

On a nearly remote island just barely off the coast of France, a cartoonist finds himself dealing with a possible nuclear apocalypse. The power goes as does the internet, phones, and radio. What other explanation could there be given the ratcheting up of state and terrorist rhetoric around nuclear weapons.

Turns out it's something much more unexpected and earth-shattering. A group of seemingly far-evolved humans have come to save their less-advanced cousins from themselves.

The tone is lovely and gentle while dealing with some very heavy and harsh realities - pandemic, the rejection of a cure (for everything), violent nationalism, xenophobia, racism, violence.

There's a welcome undercurrent of hope throughout which is unusual in a seemingly dystopian novel.

There's an engaging cast of core characters and it's all very believable.

I felt like the story and the novel fizzled out somewhat at the end but, nevertheless, I'm glad to have been introduced to Maalouf and his writing, albeit in translation.

Hm. This was not for me. I was expecting something different; one should be aware that his is totally different from the author's other books. It's very sci-fiy, and there was not much plot. Moreover, the topics the book deal with are too present, particularly with the pandemic in mind. So maybe I'm not ready for this!

really clumsy translation but if you can look past that there's a very unique story here. interesting stuff

Alec, a press artist, settles in a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean named Antioch - reference to one of the most important cities during the Hellenistic period, the Roman/Byzantine empire, and the crusades.

His only neighbor is this woman called Eve who wrote a book and is searching for inspiration, which he didn’t really care about at first until a huge power break cut them off from the rest of the world.

None of them understands what is happening, and with no electricity or internet, Alec starts to panic. Is it a terrorist attack? A nuclear war? Soon enough, Alec managed to get his old friend Moro on the phone whom is a close advisor to the president of the United States.

As a huge fan of Maalouf’s writing, the English translation of “Nos frères inattendus” is so well written. And as always in his writing, Maalouf makes us think about our world, realize what will happen eventually but also to always have faith and hope.

I liked the first bit better I think, when we didn't know exactly what was going on and we're getting to know our characters and settings.

The rest was enjoyable enough, but I just feel like I didn't really connect with the story so didn't get the best out of it.