The Book Smuggler

A magical story of a Crusade-era bookseller who embarks on a journey through the Islamic world’s great medieval cities, winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

“I am Majid al-Hanafi of Najd. . . . I was not an honorable man.” So goes this epic tale, written in the vein of the great Arab explorers and travel writers. Scribe and bookseller Mazid al-Hanafi journeys from his remote village in the Arabian Desert dreaming of grand libraries. His passion for books draws him into a secret society of book smugglers and to the famed cultural capitals of the period―Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, Kairouan, Granada, and Cordoba. He enters a dangerous new world of ideas and experiences the cultural diversity of the Islamic Golden Age, its various sects, philosophical schools, wars, and ways of life.

Omaima Al-Khamis’s vivid descriptions of time and place trace a route through ancient cities and cultures and immerse us in a distant era, one brought to life by her magical storytelling and one in which the intellectual debates and struggles that characterized the time continue to rage today.