Vladimir Bartol’s “Alamut”

In the contemporary media-laden world of today, new developments and projects are commonly considered “new” when they are, in fact, merely renditions of previous works. Such it is with Ubisoft’s recent “Assassin’s Creed” video-game series. The world of assassins and ancient Arabic mysteries captured the imagination of many before there were video-games to tell the tale, and Vladimir Bartol’s 1938 novel “Alamut” is commonly viewed as the beginning of the assassin hype.