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The book smugglers of Timbuktu : the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures

Title: The book smugglers of Timbuktu : the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures / Charlie English.
Author: English, Charlie
Publication: London : William Collins, 2017.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFE 17-7022	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

400 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits; 24 cm

Summary

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.

Uniform Title

Storied city

Alternative Title

Storied city

Subjects

Genre/Form

History.

Note

Also published as: The storied city : the quest for Timbuktu and the fantastic mission to save its past. New York : Riverhead Books, 2017.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Prologue: Enterprise and genius -- Occupation -- A seeker of manuscripts -- A wide but extended blank -- Hell is not far away -- The fourth traveler -- Al-Qaeda to the rescue -- Frogs and rosbifs -- Ismael's list -- Destruction -- The armchair explorer -- The headless horseman -- The pope of Timbuktu -- Secret agents -- Liberation -- Lives of the scholars -- The terrible twosome -- King Leopold's paperweight -- Auto-da-fé -- Chronicle of the seeker -- An Indiana Jones moment in real life! -- Manuscript fever -- The myth factory -- Epilogue.

Call Number

JFE 17-7022

ISBN

9780008126636
0008126631
9780008184902
0008184909

OCLC

984358701

Author

English, Charlie, author.

Title

The book smugglers of Timbuktu : the quest for this storied city and the race to save its treasures / Charlie English.

Publisher

London : William Collins, 2017.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

2012

Research Call Number

JFE 17-7022

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