The Polymath

This award-winning historical novel deals with the stormy life of the outstanding Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, using historical sources, and particularly material from the writer's works, to construct the personal and intellectual universe of a fourteenth-century genius. The dominant concern of the novel — the uneasy relationship between intellectuals and political power, between scholars and authority — addresses our times through the transparent veil of history. In the first part of the novel, we are introduced to the mind of Ibn Khaldun as he dictates his work to his scribe and interlocutor. The second part delves into the heart of the man and his retrieval of a measure of happiness and affection in a remarriage, after the drowning of his first wife and their children at sea. Finally we see Ibn Khaldun as a man of action, trying to minimize the imminent horrors of invading armies and averting the sack of Damascus by Tamerlane, only to spend his last years lonely and destitute...

Author: Himmich Bensalem
Year of publication: 2003
Translator: Allen Roger
Genre: Modern prose
Number of pages: 310
Reading time: 5 h. 10 min.
Formats: FB2, EPUB, PDF
Language: english
Requests: read online, download without registration, e-book