In this brilliant exploration of the post-9/11 world, leading Lebanese novelist and intellectual Amin Maalouf sets out to understand the urgent challenges the world faces today. Instead of seeing the current disorder of the post-9/11 world as a 'clash of civilisations' Maalouf sees it as the 'exhaustion of two civilisations', a period in which humanity has reached its threshold of 'moral incompetence'. Disordered World is a plea by one of the major writers of our time for intelligence, tolerance and a sense of urgency in order that we develop a mature vision of our patrimony, our beliefs, our differences and the future of the planet which is our common home.