Al-Habashi, authored by Jean Christophe Rovan

In the late 17th century, Bonsie, the French herbalist, travels to live in Cairo, one of the centers of an unprecedented alliance between the Ottoman Sultanate and one of the European kingdoms: France. Despite working in secrecy due to lacking a legal certificate, his fame reaches the French consul who finds in him the ideal person to lead a secret embassy from the French king to the Negus of Abyssinia, whose declared mission is to treat the Negus, while its real aim is to restore French-Catholic control over Abyssinia, during a time of religious and expansionist conflicts among European kingdoms. Soon, Bonsie discovers that the extraordinary circumstances of his journey to achieve the goals of the King of France and the Pope are—the only—solution to the extraordinary obstacles that separate him from the one he loves.