Once Timbuktu was the seat of African civilisation and the world s richest city, romanticised by the great 16th Century traveller Leo Africanus, now the middle of nowhere.
Half a millennium later, guided by these famous writings, Nicholas Jubber set out on a journey which crossed the Atlas Mountains, the Western Sahara and the Niger River to uncover the mythic city, liberated after a full year under the black flag of jihadis. It is a part of the world that remains teeth-janglingly dangerous, as witnessed in further terrorist atrocities in Mali in 2015. He was taken, in disguise, into the desert to learn the age-old skills of the nomads and found out why their continued existence is so essential to the Sahara and yet so under threat.
Jubber tells a deeply moving story of resilience and compassion in the face of terror as well as a grand adventure tale across the sands of the Sahara.
Author Biography
Nicholas Jubber moved to Jerusalem to teach after graduating from Oxford University. He'd only been doing the job two weeks when the intifada broke out and he started hatching a plan to travel around the Middle East and East Africa. His two previous books, The Prester Quest and Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard were awarded Stanford Dolman Prizes. He has written for the Guardian, the Observer, the Globe and Mail, and The Tablet .
