To Timbuktu for a Haircut: A Journey Through West Africa

By Rick Antonson

Book Overview

2013 Oklahoma Book Awards -- Shortlisted

Historically rich, remote, and once unimaginably dangerous for travellers, Timbuktu still teases with "Find me if you can."

Rick Antonson's encounters with entertaining train companions Ebou and Ussegnou, a mysterious cook called Nema, and intrepid guide Zak all make you want to pack up and leave for Timbuktu tomorrow.

As Antonson travels in Senegal and Mali by train, four-wheel drive, river pinasse, camel, and foot, he tells of fourteenth-century legends, eighteenth-century explorers, and today's endangered existence of Timbuktu's 700,000 ancient manuscripts in what scholars have described as the most important archaeological discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Think Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush or Redmond O'Hanlon's Into the Heart of Borneo and you begin to see what kind of writer Rick Antonson is. To Timbuktu for a Haircut combines wry humour with shrewd observation to deliver an armchair experience that will linger in the mind long after the last page is read.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1550028057
• ISBN13: 9781550028058
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"