The King at the Edge of the World by Arthur Phillips

And you just know, even if you haven’t read the jacket flap - don’t - that the good doctor will make an innocent mistake, for which he’ll pay dearly. As a kind, honest person who prefers directness to invasion or suggestion, Mahmoud’s no match for that particular courtier, or any other, for that matter. However, the official who gives the Caliph of Caliphs the idea to send the doctor with the diplomats lusts after Mahmoud’s wife. He has little choice, really, for Murad the Great’s command is law.

Truly, Allah has blessed him.īut a diplomatic mission to London, of all places, is setting forth, and Mahmoud, who’d rather not go anywhere, is dragged along. He has a comfortable house, a beautiful, loving wife, and a son whom he dotes on. As court physician to the Sultan Murad in Constantinople, Mahmoud is highly respected, and his general practice gives him a deserved reputation as a skilled, empathic healer. In 1591, Mahmoud Ezzedine lives a fulfilling life. He will do almost anything to return home to his wife and son.Īrthur Phillips returns with a unique and thrilling novel that will leave readers questioning the nature of truth at every turn.Review: The King at the Edge of the World, by Arthur Phillips The perfect man for the job, Ezzedine is the ultimate outsider, stranded on this cold, wet, and primitive island. Belloc enlists Mahmoud Ezzedine, a Muslim physician left behind by the last diplomatic visit from the Ottoman Empire, as his undercover agent. It falls to Geoffrey Belloc, a secret warrior from the hottest days of England’s religious battles, to devise a test to discover the true nature of King James’s soul.

With time running out, London confronts a seemingly impossible question: What does James truly believe? He has every reason to claim to be a Protestant, but if he secretly shares his family’s Catholicism, then forty years of religious war will have been for nothing, and a bloodbath will ensue. The queen’s spymasters-hardened veterans of a long war on terror and religious extremism-fear that James is not what he appears. The leading candidate is King James VI of Scotland, but there is a problem. Potential successors secretly maneuver to be in position when the inevitable occurs. It is a capital crime even to think that Elizabeth will ever die. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE WASHINGTON POST “Evokes flashes of Hilary Mantel, John le Carré and Graham Greene, but the wry, tricky plot that drives it is pure Arthur Phillips.”- The Wall Street Journal Queen Elizabeth’s spymasters recruit an unlikely agent-the only Muslim in England-for an impossible mission in a mesmerizing novel from “one of the best writers in America” ( The Washington Post)

The King at the Edge of the World by Arthur Phillips