The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu
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15
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Average rating4
Two tales of a city: The historical race to reach one of the world's most mythologized places, and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda, added another layer to the legend. To Westerners, the name "Timbuktu" long conjured a tantalising paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for "discovery" tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way too. A medieval centre of learning, it was home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts, on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology, and astronomy. When al-Qaeda-linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these precious documents, a remarkable thing happened: a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding. Relying on extensive research and firsthand reporting, Charlie English expertly twines these two suspenseful strands into a fascinating account of one of the planet's extraordinary places, and the myths from which it has become inseparable.
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Hints of spoilers below, so read on only if you know about this, or don't mind some discussion around the edges.
Timbuktu - it really is a magical name for a city, one that conjures up such strong impressions of the wild, inaccessible African El Dorado. It is a place that captivates the imagination, it is a city so well recognised for the lack of knowledge about it, which is quite ironic. Timbuktu was also a historic Islamic centre of learning and religion - a fact discovered by the West only a long time after its heyday.
Congratulations me, I read a book only a little more than a year after it was published, this is quite a rare event. I was gifted an on0line book voucher and the shop had only limited stock available and this captured my imagination.
I found it an excellent read - well put together with an easy structure. It basically runs two narratives, going chapter about. The first is the titular theme - the rescue of the hundreds of thousands () of ancient manuscripts stored in the official and private libraries of collectors which were at risk () from the al-Qaeda-linked jihadists from 2012 to 2015. The secondary theme is covers the western exploration of (or to) Timbuktu - going back to 1788, when Africa was in fashion, and not well explored. Joseph Banks with other members of the Royal Society formed the Africa Association - and they advertised for explorers to fulfil exploration missions.
Africa had previously been written off as the continent which had no recorded history - where people had no learning to pass down. And yet historic stories of the wealth of Timbuktu had been massively exaggerated, Timbuktu was to change that.
Successive chapters move both story lines forward a little at a time, until they come together at the end of the book.
There are some twists and turns, and some well explained concise history. The book smugglers theme has a rather well telegraphed twist, which is not necessarily resolved by this book - something other reviewers have identified as an issue. It wasn't such an issue for me. The exploration theme tells some wonderful stories - some already well known, some less so, but all entertaining. The mix if right for me - not so much detail that the exploration stories get bogged down, but not so little that it reads as an outline.
My only complaint, and I don't know how this could be resolved better - is that many of the people featured in the book have similar names, and it can be pretty confusing with the who is who.
Overall easy to read, well organised and enjoyable.
4 stars.
* - maybe!
