Many have the impression of Algiers before the French made it a colony in the third decade of the nineteenth century and subjected its people to all manner of suffering and humiliation, as a “cesspool of misery” for thousands of people captured and enslaved there. How, many have wondered, would anyone risk travel in the […]
Iceland and Algiers Read More »
A recent publication by a distinguished professor of History, Daniel Hershenzon, brings into focus how “In the early modern western Mediterranean, a wide range of individuals, networks, and institutions dealt with the trafficking of people—capturing, enslaving, smuggling, and ransoming—across and beyond the borders of Spain’s Mediterranean territories, Morocco, and Ottoman Algiers and Tunis.” In
Charles Mace and his wife figure significantly in several of the novels, and was in fact the British Consul General in Algiers for several years. I hope that the liberties I’ve taken with this historical character in no way impugn his reputation. I envision an even more significant role for his wife in the volumes
The setting for The Muhammad Amalfi Mysteries is Algiers in the final decades of the Ottoman Regency. Like Camus who yearned for a future in which the city he loved might become a Utopian, impossible City of Man, my protagonist’s dream is of an Algiers that is the Amsterdam of the Mediterranean, a diverse hub
First Impressions… from the Sea Read More »
As historical novels, the Muhammad Amalfi Mysteries follow, however loosely, the events that shaped the Mediterranean world in the final decade of the Eighteenth century and the first decades of the Nineteenth, up until the French incursions beginning in June of 1830. I have done my best to remain true to those events and, in
Jean Bon St. Andre Read More »
One of the sources I’ve made use of in writing the Muhammad Amalfi Mysteries is the British Newspaper Archives, found at www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk This is a brilliant collection of digitized British, Irish and Scottish newspapers, as they appeared in print, from as early as the seventeenth century to the present day. The search engine is powerful
British Newspaper Archive Read More »
Muhammad’s Education and the EnlightenmentBefore drifting out to sea and being carried away to Algiers by the Dey’s corsairs, Muhammad, then Ettore had already acquired an education in what would today be characterized as street smarts. We learn in Book One of the series how he grew up in the brothel in which his mother
Muhammad Amalfi’s Education and the Enlightenment Read More »
The writing of a work of fiction requires a good deal of patience. Other factors are involved, but patience is a virtue that might be said to transcend all others. In writing and rewriting the Muhammad Amalfi Mysteries, I used some of the methods I’d found effective as a translator. For example, one’s initial translation
Fear and Atmosphere Read More »
Charles Marlow, a recurring character in Joseph Conrad’s fiction, once referred to “the blank spaces on the map.” I have always been fascinated by and drawn to such places and, in my life, have been fortunate enough to visit and explore several of them.The Mediterranean, in the words of Fernand Braudel, that “complex of seas
Why Ottoman Algiers? Read More »
