The Gardens of Light

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Amin Maalouf is a Lebanese-born French author who has lived in France since 1976. Although his native language is Arabic, he writes in French, and his works have been translated into over 40 languages. Of his several works of nonfiction, The Crusades through Arab Eyes is probably the best known.

The Gardens of Light tells the life story of Mani, painter, doctor, and prophet born in Mesopotamia--modern day Iraq--in the early third century of the Christian era. He advocated "The Gospel of Light"--a religious system which was a mixture of Gnostic Christian beliefs, ancient Persian Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and some pagan elements. This came to be known as Manichaeism and attracted vast numbers of disciples. The mystic exercised a powerful attraction over his disciples--rulers and scholars, itinerant merchants, shippers, baptists and sages who inhabited the shores of the Tigris--and was hated by the Magi, the high priests of Zoroastrianism who felt threatened and eventually had him imprisoned, tortured and killed in 276 AD. Amin Maalouf brings life and color to the character and times of Mani. In the pages of The Gardens of Light, Mani's cry for tolerance can be heard echoing across the centuries of our times.

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