![]() ![]() NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE WASHINGTON POST ![]() “Evokes flashes of Hilary Mantel, John le Carré and Graham Greene, but the wry, tricky plot that drives it is pure Arthur Phillips.”- The Wall Street Journal Queen Elizabeth’s spymasters recruit an unlikely agent-the only Muslim in England-for an impossible mission in a mesmerizing novel from “one of the best writers in America” ( The Washington Post) Ezzedine finds Christian differences to be unintelligible and bizarre, but he is drawn in anyway and forced to reluctantly play his part. The main candidate is the Scottish king, James VI, but no one is sure if he's a fellow Protestant, and therefore a safe choice, or a closeted Catholic who might slaughter them all as heretics. England nervously awaits the death of Elizabeth I and everyone schemes about her replacement. ![]() Mahmoud Ezzedine is a Turkish Muslim who has been betrayed and abandoned in London by an unscrupulous countryman. We follow a sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and intellectually curious doctor who is forced to leave his home in one of the world's most glittering metropolises and accompany an embassy to one of the world's most depressingly squalid, backwater cities. This is his sixth novel, and it's simply wonderful. His characters are fully realized and complex. His stories are diverse, beautifully written, and engaging. For the life of me, I can't figure out why Arthur Phillips isn't a better seller. ![]()
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