A starving Italian painter flees Paris in the winter of 1974. His destination -- a tiny private island lost in the Indian Ocean. His destiny -- a soul-crushing love triangle with a French nobleman and a haughty Parisian intellectual. His fate -- involuntary exile. And a predestined son, Laurent D'Allegro.
An adored father, why would he have inexplicably abandoned home?
At 33, a visual artist himself, Laurent is on the verge of fame and scandal. From bullied teen to heart breaker and serial seducer, he is the ugly duckling turned into a gorgeous swan – living only to devour other swans. Emotionally crippled, he oscillates between taking revenge and seeking redemption. True love, and a tragedy, will help him decide.
Algeria, Iceland, Italy, France, Morocco, Russia, Sweden, the US, remote islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans -- we crisscross the globe in this journey of a young man trying to trace his origins through a maze of lies. Traveling back and forth in time across five generations of an extraordinary family, understanding less as he discovers more, Laurent realizes to have loved and hated people in his life for the wrong reasons, which are not fully understood until -- the last canvas.
I am not who I am.
I am not what you think I am.
Please listen, and be kind.
Like every other Muslimah her age, Syeda Anaabiya Ahmed dreamed of a love that would heal her scars-a love that would cherish and protect her. As an orphan, she had spent her life fighting battles no child should face-struggling for survival, for a home, and, most painfully, for the love even her own younger sister denied her.
Her last hope rested on marriage-the man destined to be her partner, her guide, the one who would help her grow into a better Muslimah. But that dream shattered the moment she was forced to marry Syed Humza Junaid-a man she loathed, a man as ruthless as the dark empire he ruled, a man who saw love as nothing more than a weakness.
Defiant and unyielding, Anaabiya refuses to be another pawn in Humza's world of power and crime. She challenges him at every turn, determined not to bow to his arrogance and cruelty. But just when she thinks she has him figured out, the cracks in his armor begin to show-a man tormented by his demons, a man who, against all odds, might just be capable of love.
As their world spirals into chaos, hatred begins to blur into something far more dangerous. Love. Obsession. Destruction.
Will Anaabiya tame the monster within him, or will she lose herself in the fire that is Syed Humza Junaid?
Join Anaabiya on a journey where love and ruin walk hand in hand-where the heart's deepest desires clash with fate's cruelest twists.