The First Century after Beatrice
The First Century after Beatrice (French: Le Premier siècle après Béatrice) is a 1992 novel by the French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf. The story is set in a near future, where a pharmacological company markets, in the guise of a traditional folk remedy, a drug by which parents can choose to only have sons. The story is told from the first-person point of view of an entomologist. As the disastrous consequences of the skewed male/female birth ratio resulting from the drug multiply, he transitions from pondering and documenting them to organizing a body of scientists who attempt to reckon with the disaster.
Reception
John Tague of The Independent wrote: "Although Maalouf's image of the future is not a happy one, this parable never becomes portentous. His prose achieves an effortless lyricism which is always a pleasure to read - a reason, perhaps, for some little optimism in itself. If someone is going to tell a story about the end of the world, we can glean some comfort from the fact that it is told in a voice as refined and delightful as Amin Maalouf's."[1]
See also
- 1992 in literature
- Contemporary French literature
References
- ^ Tague, John (1994-01-02). "The unlikely metamorphosis of the future". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-06-18. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
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- Leo Africanus (1986)
- Samarkand (1988)
- The Gardens of Light (1991)
- The First Century after Beatrice (1992)
- The Rock of Tanios (1993)
- Ports of Call (1996)
- Balthasar's Odyssey (2000)
- On the Isle of Antioch (2020)
- The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1983)
- In the Name of Identity (1998)
- Adrift: How Our World Lost Its Way (2019)
- L'Amour de loin (2000)
- Adriana Mater (2006)
- La Passion de Simone (2006)
- Émilie (2010)
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