Three friends untangle their unusual personal histories while navigating love and tragedy after September 11, 2001. It is late summer 2001. Professor Rifaat al-Muheiddin of the London School of Economics is a wanted man in the Middle East. In London, his teenage sister Laila blazes up the club scene. In Manhattan, the daughter of a U.S. ambassador, Nico, keeps a ghost in he Three friends untangle their unusual personal histories while navigating love and tragedy after September 11, 2001. It is late summer 2001. Professor Rifaat al-Muheiddin of the London School of Economics is a wanted man in the Middle East. In London, his teenage sister Laila blazes up the club scene. In Manhattan, the daughter of a U.S. ambassador, Nico, keeps a ghost in her mind: she believes that the injustice her late father had suffered in the hands of Congress had led to his early demise. A clear, beautiful morning in the Big Apple brings death and destruction upon the World Trade Center. The event leads Nico to London, where she meets Rifaat and Laila. But the city of Big Ben is anything but serene a year after September 11 and as the drums of war beat yet again. Nico, Rifaat, and Laila navigate the British capital convulsing in fashionable anti-Americanism, the rise of Islamists, and the shadow of what they all fear—the clash of civilizations—until destiny brings about the shocking death of one of them. Weaving the historical into the personal, LIGHT FROM THE ANCIENTS is as much a meditation on U.S. foreign policy, parenthood, and friendship as it is a story of improbable love.