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THE ABYSSINIAN.(Review)(Brief Article)
Jean-Christophe Rufin, trans. By Willard Wood. Norton, $25.95 (448p) ISBN 0-393-04716-4
French physician Rufin's extensively researched historical novel, winner of both the Prix Mediterrance and the Prix Goncourt, is a sprawling romance set in the Ottoman east during the time of Louis XIV. Religious rivalries dictate politics in 17th-century Cairo, where the Europeans live in uneasy alliance with the Muslims under Turkish authority. On orders from the Sun King, Monsieur de Maillet, the French consul in Cairo and an exile of the minor nobility, must come up with a scheme to open an embassy in Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia), a richly endowed country penetrated by the …
