Jeremy Keenan travelled to Algeria in search of the Tuareg, the fearsome indigo-veiled nomads of the Central Sahara with whom he had lived as a young anthropologist. A chance meeting set him on his way to the Tuareg traditional fortress, the vast mountainous area of Ahaggar, in the tracks of bandits, his tents pitched besides caves decorated with pre-historic paintings. Here he discovered that the Tuareg, who had learned to survive as tourist guides after the horrors of Algeria's war of independence, were now being starved out of their livelihood by the violence in the north.
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Tough one to sum up in a review, this one. While the content is great, and the information about the Tuareg comes across as accurate and authentic, I found it a hard book to maintain momentum with. It is hard to explain, because the story was interesting - a return visit to Algeria after 30 years to reconnect with people the author had met and spent time with, and the author had an obvious passion for the Tuareg, and the experiences he had with them, but it just didn't pass that passion on to the reader at times.
My coping mechanism in these cases is to read a couple of chapters of this, then read a different book, and return to this when complete, or is a frame of mind to try this again. Hence the long read duration - almost a month! This is course has the negative impact on the book, in that there isn't the continuity, or the ability to retain detail about the people in the narrative.
Nevertheless, this isn't a bad book by any means, and for those with some prior understanding of the Tuareg, a particular interest in the the author, or perhaps someone more focussed on the reading it is probably more compelling. However, I can't fault the content.
3.5 stars, rounded down.
