The Mercy of Allah is a humorous, satirical novel on the methods by which the merchant Mahmoud rises from humble beginnings to massive wealth. The setting in a fictionalized Middle East provides deeply-Catholic author Hilaire Belloc a far-off land in which to attack what he saw as the rapacious nature of the British businessmen, industrialists, and bankers of his day.
Each episode of Mahmoud's life satirizes greed, from small frauds and outright theft, to market manipulation, money-printing, and funding both sides in a long war. Mahmoud justifies all his dealings as simply the way things are: For Allah, in his inscrutable choice, frowns on some and smiles on others. The first he condemns to contempt, anxiety, duns, bills, courts of law, sudden changes of residence and even dungeons; the second he gratifies with luxurious vehicles, delicious sherbet and enormous houses, such as mine.
First published in 1922, this satire fits into Hilaire Belloc's growing advocacy for the economic and social philosophy of distributism. It was selected as one of four books by Belloc for Arnold Bennett and Frank Swinnerton's influential Literary Taste: How to Form It.
Il n'y a pas encore de discussion sur ce livre
Soyez le premier à en lancer une !
"On n'est pas dans le futurisme, mais dans un drame bourgeois ou un thriller atmosphérique"
L'auteur se glisse en reporter discret au sein de sa propre famille pour en dresser un portrait d'une humanité forte et fragile
Au Rwanda, l'itinéraire d'une femme entre rêve d'idéal et souvenirs destructeurs
Participez et tentez votre chance pour gagner des livres !
