The Storied City: The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past

Author: English, Charlie

Color: Red

Edition: Illustrated

Format: Illustrated

Number Of Pages: 416

Details:

“Timbuktu is a real place, and Charlie English will fuel your wanderlust with true descriptions of the fabled city’s past, present, and future.” –Fodor’s Two tales of a city: The historical race to “discover” 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 tantalizing 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 center of learning, it was home to tens of thousands—according to some, hundreds 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 fraught and fascinating account of one of the planet's extraordinary places, and the myths from which it has become inseparable.

Reviews:

“[Charlie English] reconstruct[s] vivid scenes…A classic nonfiction braid…fits perfectly into ongoing narrative of Timbuktu, a place where the magnificence of the tale can occlude the plain fact of what’s there.” –New York Times Book Review"Spellbinding." —The New Yorker 

"Thrilling...English tells the new and the older tales in parallel...The two stories illuminate each other... a brilliant device." – The Economist"An exemplary piece of investigative journalism that is also a wonderfully colourful book of history and travel. Above all, it is a work of intellectual honesty that represents narrative non-fiction at its most satisfying and engaging." – The Guardian

“Insightful...interesting…[ The Storied City] shows that the sort of willful delusion behind much of the 18th and 19th century quest for Timbuktu continues to this day.” –The Wall Street Journal  

“Timbuktu is a real place, and Charlie English will fuel your wanderlust with true descriptions of the fabled city’s past, present, and future.” –Fodor’s 

"Captivatingly considers the mythic quality Timbuktu attained in the collective imagination, and the failure to understand the city's continued importance as a treasure trove of knowledge." - Shelf Awareness

“English writes vividly of explorations of the past and complications of the present, with a focus on the Indiana Jones-style account of the evacuation of the manuscripts.” – The BBC"A piece of postmodern historiography of quite extraordinary sophistication and ingenuity." -- The Times Literary Supplement

"Part reportage, part history, part romance and wholly gripping… a riveting read." --Sunday Times 

“A compelling work of history and historiography…[An] engrossing history of a city with the enduring power to fascinate” – Kirkus Reviews

"Clear eyed and straightforward...[English] thoroughly dispels the myths about Timbuktu to reveal a truth that is, in many ways, even more remarkable.”  --Booklist“English shares his firsthand observations of the region’s people and its treasures, offering a no less fantastical or unlikely tale than those imagined in the fever-dreams of the first Europeans to venture up the Niger.” - -Publisher's Weekly

"A fascinating interweaving of past and present: meticulously researched, powerfully written and riveting." -- Ben Macintyre, author of Rogue Heroes and A Spy Among Friends  

"In this enthralling book - part h...

EAN: 9781594634291

Release Date: 01-05-2018

Languages: English

Item Note: Great shape- pages are unmarked and sharp.Has a remainder mark. Paperback Used - Like New Ships fast! 2018Reprint

Item Condition: UsedLikeNew

Binding: Paperback