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Jean-Christophe Rufin yokes the elegant language of the French enlightenment with the storytelling of Alexandre Dumas to create a splendid parable of liberty, religious fanaticism and the possibility of happiness. 'Set in 1700, towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV, it follows the fortunes of a brave apothecary, a talented but unofficial doctor, who is talked into leading an embassy from Cairo to Ethiopia . . . Rufin maintains a perfect balance between impatient detachment and compassionate curiosity. "The Abyssinian," like Thackeray's " Vanity Fair," carries the weight of history with good-humoured finesse' "The Times " 'An ambitious first novel, dashing, abundant and, when necessary, vividly theatrical' "Times Literary Supplement" '[A] remarkably assured first novel . . . Rufin's writing is elegantly readable' "Independent" 'It is old-fashioned enough to be delightful, and new enough to be moving' "Glasgow Herald " 'Rufin offers the reader at least three different novels in the space of a single book: a tale of diplomatic intrigue, a voyage of discovery to a virtually unknown civilisation, and a chronicle of the adventures and loves of his irrepressible hero' "Daily Telegraph"
Author
Jean-Christophe Rufin is a French doctor and novelist. He is the president of Action Against Hunger and one of the founders of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without borders). He was Ambassador of France in Senegal from 2007 to June 2010. Rufin was born in Bourges, Cher in 1952. An only child, he was raised by his grandparents, because his father had left the family and his mother worked in Paris. His grandfather, a doctor and member of the French Resistance during World War II, had been imprisoned for two years at Buchenwald. In 1977, after medical school, Rufin went to Tunisia as a volunteer doctor. He led his first humanitarian mission in Eritrea,where he met Azeb, who became his second wife. A graduate of the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Political Sciences) in 1986, he became advisor to the Secretary of State for Human Rights and published his first book, Le Piège humanitaire (The Humanitarian Trap), an essay on the political stakes of humanitarian action. As a doctor, he has led numerous missions in eastern Africa and Latin America. He is former vice-president of Médecins Sans Frontières and former president of the non-governmental organization Action Against Hunger.
