The philosopher Zeno founded the school of Stoics in Athens even though he never forgot for an instant that Phoenician blood ran through his veins. Towards the end of his life, he wanted to prevent that the memory of his people be lost in the whirlpool of history. So he decided to entrust to his disciple, Apollonius, the story of his mother Elissa’s life, and together with her, his people and his native land. Born in Tyre, a flourishing Phoenician island-city, Elissa is a young woman full of curiosity. Cultured and refined, she undertakes with her paternal uncle Gerbaal a long voyage along the Mediterranean coasts to Carthage. But it is really a delicate diplomatic mission: the army of Alexander the Great has already taken Byblos and Sidon and is now menacing Tyre, the last stronghold and symbol of Phoenician greatness. An alliance with their Carthaginian “brothers” is the sole hope of resisting the conqueror of the world. In Carthage, Elissa finds love, but must return to her homeland because warships are darkening the horizon. Great navigators, skilful businessmen, inventors of the alphabet, the inhabitants of Tyre are now forced to take up arms to ready themselves for Alexander’s exhausting siege. For seven interminable months, Alexander’s soldiers try to construct an earthwork of trees and boulders to reach the island, and every night, for seven months, the people of Tyre demolish it stone by stone. The besieged populace defends itself with the impetus of desperation, but the besiegers continue to come up with exceptional strategies. Until the final bloody showdown. In Fenicia, the combination of Elissa’s intense first person narrative interwoven with the description of Alexander’s deeds gives rise to a novel about the civilization that contributed to creating our world. A novel of heroic acts and betrayals, love and suffering, honour and a thirst for liberty, the shrewdness and strenuous resistance of a peaceful populace against the force of an unbeatable army.