Balthasar’s Odyssey
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Months before the dawn of the apocalyptic “Year of the Beast” in 1666, Balthasar Embriaco, a Levantine of Genoese stock and a merchant in curios, sets out with his two nephews, his clerk and Marta, a young woman abandoned by her husband, on an adventure that will take him across the breadth of the then civilised world. His urgent quest is to track down a copy of one of the rarest and most coveted books ever printed, a volume he once possessed, but which he sold in a moment of weakness. Known by the title “The Hundredth Name”, its contents are thought to be of vital importance to the future of the world; there are ninety-nine names for God in the Koran, and merely to know this most secret hundredth name will, Balthasar believes, ensure his salvation. But will he achieve his desire?
Balthasar’s journey takes him and his companions to Constantinople and thence to Smyrna and Aleppo, before they embark for the Isle of Chios and sail through the Mediterranean, eventually arriving in London just before the outbreak of the Great Fire.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Barbara
Bray
Barbara Bray (1924–2010) was a renowned British translator, script editor, and radio producer who became one of the most vital links between 20th-century French avant-garde literature and the English-speaking world. She is best known as Marguerite Duras’s preferred translator and as the intellectual partner of Samuel Beckett.
Barbara Bray (1924–2010) was a renowned British translator, script editor, and radio producer who became one of the most vital links between 20th-century French avant-garde literature and the English-speaking world. She is best known as Marguerite Duras’s preferred translator and as the intellectual partner of Samuel Beckett.