The internationally successful novelist and essayist Amin Maalouf, born in Lebanon and residing in France for many years, a "wanderer between worlds," describes, following his essay "Murderous Identities," which was published ten years ago, the crisis of "deregulation" - in ethical and intellectual, geopolitical, economic, and "climatic" terms - from which both the West and the Middle East are affected for different reasons. While authors like Samuel P. Huntington and Stefan Weidner discuss a "clash of cultures," Maalouf diagnoses a state of exhaustion that both cultures have fallen into - from which only a reflection on their own values and the future can provide relief.