Leon l'Africain, Paperback Book, By: Amin Maalouf

This imaginary autobiography starts from a true story. In 1518, a Maghrebian ambassador, returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, was captured by Sicilian pirates, and offered as a gift to Leo X. This traveler was called Hassan al-Wazzan. He became the geographer Jean-Leon de Medicis, known as Leon l'Africain. His life, punctuated by the great events of his time, is fascinating: he was in Granada during the Reconquista, from where he had to flee the Inquisition, in Egypt during its conquest by the Ottomans, in black Africa in the he apogee of the empire of Askia Mohamed Toure, finally in Rome at the height of the Renaissance, as well as at the time of the sack of the city by the soldiers of Charles V. Man of East and West, man of Africa and Europe,