sinking civilizations

Author's name: Amin Maalouf

Amin Maalouf's analyses should be treated with care; his intuitions are prophetic, given his vast foreknowledge of the major transformations that history has witnessed. Twenty years ago, he was concerned about the rise of "murderous identities," and ten years ago about the "imbalance of the world." Today, he explains why all civilizations are in danger of sinking. For more than half a century, the author has been observing and traveling the world. He was in Saigon when the Vietnam War ended, and in Tehran when the Islamic Revolution erupted. In this insightful and detailed study, he is both a concerned observer and a thinker, blending factual narration with the presentation of propositions. He sometimes recounts prominent events to which he was one of the few eyewitnesses, then rises to the level of historian, transcending his personal experience to explain the reasons for the successive deviations that humanity has witnessed, leading to this collapse. He says that “darkness began to spread from my motherland,” before addressing the demise of the Orient of pluralism and the successive shocks that struck the Arab-Islamic world, the subsequent repercussions of which gradually spread throughout the world. The author also puts forward a new hypothesis about a “great revolution” that led to radical transformations in all human societies, such that we are now its terrified inheritors. He concludes his study by stating that an awakening is inevitable; the ship of the world cannot continue sailing toward its doom.