Mawlana

About this book

Behind the guarded gates of gilded palaces, where courtiers bow and perform the rituals of absolute deference, lives a man weighed down rather than elevated by the crown he wears. In the shadowy expanse between the majesty of supreme power and the fragility of the human spirit, Mawlana takes readers into the intimate interior of a collapsing world. He is far more than a monarch upon an ancient throne; he is a captive soul drifting between sleepless nights at gaming tables and the muffled tears wept in the dark of his speeding car. Possessing an empire yet master of nothing, he is haunted by the shadow of a dynastic legacy that began with the ruthless ambition of a conqueror and is now unravelling toward exile along the Mediterranean shore. Amid palace intrigues, the whispered manipulations of servants, and a nation on the brink of revolution, Mohamed Al-Awn crafts a devastating psychological portrait of an authority that isolates and a human soul denied the simple freedom to be ordinary. An extraordinary work of modern Arabic fiction, Mawlana is an evocative meditation on solitude, the anatomy of authority, and the tragic price of wearing an inescapable mask.