The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu: The Quest for this Storied City and the Race to Save Its Treasures. Charlie English

      

      

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

      Copyright © 2017 by Charlie English

      Maps by Meighan Cavanaugh

      Frontispiece: Nineteenth-century drawing of Timbuktu, based on a description by the French explorer René Caillié

      Charlie English asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      While the author has made every effort to provide accurate Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

      Source ISBN: 9780008126650

      Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008126643

      Version: 2018-05-01

       Dedication

       For Lucy

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

Maps

      Prologue: A Man of Enterprise and Genius

      PART ONE: OCCUPATION

       1. A Seeker of Manuscripts

       2. A Wide Extended Blank

       3. Hell Is Not Far Away

       4. The Fourth Traveller

       5. Al-Qaeda to the Rescue

       6. It Shall Be Mine

       7. Ismael’s List

      PART TWO: DESTRUCTION

       8. The Armchair Explorer

       9. A Headless Horseman

       10. The Pope of Timbuktu

       11. Secret Agents

      PART THREE: LIBERATION

       12. Lives of the Scholars

       13. The Terrible Twosome

       14. King Leopold’s Paperweight

       15. Auto-da-Fé

       16. Chronicle of the Researcher

       17. An Indiana Jones Moment in Real Life!

       18. Manuscript Fever

       19. The Myth Factory

       Epilogue

      Picture Section

       Notes

       Selected Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgments

       Photo Credits

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       Maps