Description
‘Life in exile! May it be cursed. Once you have become a stranger, a stranger you shall remain; you may endeavour to make friends, but the task is a difficult one, from end to end with uncertainty.’
In this multi-stranded epic, an Uzbek writer in exile traces the fate of the medieval polymath Avicenna, who shaped Islamic thought and science for centuries.
Waking from a portentous dream, Uzbek writer Sheikhov is convinced that the medieval polymath Avicenna lives on, condemned to roam the world. The novel follows Avicenna in various incarnations across the ages from Ottoman Turkey to medieval Germany and Renaissance Italy. Sheikhov plies the same route, though his troubles are distinctly modern as he endures the petty humiliations of exile.
Combining traditional oral storytelling with contemporary global fiction, the novel is a modern Sufi parable about the search for truth and wisdom.