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Customer Review
Call this worthy advertisment...
I feel compelled to review this book in order to inspire others to read it. The book provides a rich and rewarding reading experience. Loaded with history. Loaded with adventure. Loaded with romance. "The Abyssinian" is brilliant adventure. For educated readers who often feel cheated by the cheap thrills so common to popular fiction, this book is a godsend. Every page teaches and awes and thrills. Of course there are limits inherent to the adventure genre, but this novel so often transcends the genre with its barrage of detail, research, well written descriptions, and well drawn characters that it is first and foremost an intelligent work of literature. Lucky for the reader, it is so darn much fun to read!
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December 3, 1999
(Chicago, IL) | Helpful Votes: 19 | Rating: 5
Wonderful historical fiction...
According to the dust jacket, THE ABYSSINIAN by Jean-Christophe Rufin is a first novel. If so, I hope Rufin writes many more books because THE ABYSSINIAN is one of the best works of fiction I've read in a while. Rufin is a French physician who has spent many years working with Doctor's Without Borders. His writing reflects his medical background as well as his love of and regard for his fellow human beings.Rufin is both romantic and a realist. A major thread in the plot of THE ABYSSINIAN involves a romance between his protagonist Jean-Baptiste Poncet, unlicensed lower-class medical practicioner living in Cairo, and Alix Maillet, the beautiful upper-class daughter of the French Ambassador to Egypt. Rufin's story is made real by his deft interweaving of actual historical events and evocative fictional episodes he has crafted from his obvious knowledge of the era and it's political machinations. The basis of the book is an event that occurred in 1699 when Louis XIV sent an embassy...
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March 18, 2001
(USA) | Helpful Votes: 17 | Rating: 5
Vivid and Unexpected
I have read this book in French and can say that it is well worth reading whether in French or English or any other language. It has a texture and magnificence that one rarely encounters. Parts of it evoke The Sheltering Sky, Lawrence of Arabia and The English Patient. Its structure twists and turns unexpectedly but ultimately gratifies resoundingly when the last page is turned.
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June 21, 1999
| Helpful Votes: 13 | Rating: 5
Product Description
In 1699, Louis XIV of France sent an embassy to the most mysterious of oriental sovereigns, the Negus, or King, of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia).
Louis' hope was to lure that country into the political and religious orbit of France. Jean-Baptiste Poncet, young apothecary/physician to the pashas of Cairo, is the hero of this romantic epic embroidering upon the known details of that long-forgotten embassy. Selected by the French consul to lead the mission. Poncet travels through the deserts of Egypt and the mountains of Abyssinia to the court of the Negus, thence to Versailles and back again. Along the way he falls madly in love with the consul's daughter, treats the Negus for a mysterious skin ailment, and gains a disastrous audience with the king of France.
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At the heart of Jean-Christophe Rufin's marvelous first novel is a nugget of truth: in the year 1699, Louis XIV of France sent an embassy to the King of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia). From this small fact Rufin has spun a mesmerizing tale of adventure, romance, and political intrigue that is one part Alexandre Dumas and two parts Rafael Sabatini, with just a dash of Brian Moore thrown in for good measure.
The hero of this epic tale is Jean-Baptiste Poncet, a young French doctor who has been practicing medicine without a license in Cairo. Poncet first comes to the notice of the authorities when the French consul in Egypt receives a secret message from a Jesuit priest commanding him in Louis's name to send a diplomatic mission to the king of Abyssinia. Foreigners--especially Christians--have not been welcome in that country since the Jesuits were expelled 50 years before, and a regular delegation would almost certainly be killed. When the consul, Monsieur de Maillet, hears that the Abyssinian monarch requires a doctor, however, he devises a plan to send Poncet both to cure and to convince the king to send a return delegation to Versailles.
Poncet has his own reasons for agreeing to go on this perilous mission: he has fallen in love with de Maillet's beautiful daughter, Alix. Unfortunately, he knows that "within the Frankish colony in Cairo, he was nothing more--whatever pains he took to hide his ancestry--than the son of a servant girl and an unknown man." The only hope he has of gaining the consul's blessing is to win Louis XIV's favor; bringing an Abyssinian embassy to Versailles might just do the trick. Poncet starts out for self-serving reasons; upon meeting King Negus, however, he comes to admire him, and soon finds himself jeopardizing his own future in order to thwart the political intrigues of his countrymen.
Rufin tells this larger-than-life tale with wit, sophistication, and a wholehearted enjoyment that shines through every sentence of this beautifully translated novel. Jean-Baptiste Poncet, a young man who "had been offered every opportunity for sadness and despair, yet ... had decided long ago that he would never succumb to such feelings," is a hero with heart, intelligence, and charm, and the book's many secondary characters are equally well developed. All in all, The Abyssinian marks a delightful literary debut. --Alix Wilber Top to learn more
Essential reading for lovers of Abyssinian breed