The Rock of Tanios

Tanios was a child of the mountains of Lebanon in the 1880s when the Egyptian Pashas were struggling against Ottoman domination and the British and French plotted with and against each other. Amin Maalouf's new novel, The Rock of Tanios, begins with a recollection of the rock on which Tanios was last seen sitting and weaves together the strands of the fascinating legend of his disappearance.

Tanios was the illegitimate son of a powerful Sheik whose every action brought…