Disordered World

 In this brilliant exploration of the post-9/11 world, leading Lebanese novelist and intellectual Amin Maalouf sets out to understand the urgent challenges the world faces today. Instead of seeing the current disorder of the post-9/11 world as a 'clash of civilisations' Maalouf sees it as the 'exhaustion of two civilisations', a period in which humanity has reached its threshold of 'moral incompetence'. Disordered World is a plea by one of the major writers of our time for intelligence, tolerance and a sense of urgency in order that we develop a mature vision of our patrimony, our beliefs, our differences and the future of the planet which is our common home.

Review: Should be prescribed reading in the Foreign Office and on the foreign desk of newspapers and the BBC -- Allan Massie * Spectator, Books of the Year *

Stimulating and provocative * Max Hastings, Sunday Times *

[Maalouf] is perfectly placed and wonderfully qualified to shed light on the pervasive sense that there is a cataclysmic battle in progress between civilisations and systems of belief. Disordered World is full of insight -- Justin Cartwright * Observer *

Fascinating ... no review can do justice to its limpid prose * Financial Times *