Description
This is the account of a journey through realms of Africa so remote, so geographically and culturally isolated that their frontiers have rarely been breached. The Sahel region of the lower Sahara, whipped by ferocious winds and shrouded in secrets, home to a vast Muslim population, is the southernmost outpost of Islam’s dominance in Africa. Comprising the southern Saharan regions of Chad, northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Senegal, it once witnessed the emergence of Africa’s wealthiest and most exotic kingdoms and empires. To this day it produces some of the continent’s leading writers, musicians and artists. But now, perilous and poverty-stricken, it rarely see travellers. Jeffrey Tayler, crossing 2500 miles across the Sahel by truck, taxi, bus and boat, uncovers this lost area of continent, revealing it as beset by ethnic rebellion and sectarian violence, rife with Islamic fundamentalism, yet home to people of extraordinary hospitality and fortitude. The Lost Kingdoms of Africa is both a breathtaking journey of discovery and a voyage into the hinterlands of the human soul by an emerging master of the travel narrative. ‘A book waiting to be written. Now it has been, and very well too’ CONDÈ NAST TRAVELLER Softcover, 274 pages. In very good pre-loved condition with the exception of being ex-library and evidence the(blank)first page has been removed. Title page and text are complete.