The Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa's City of Gold

Many gave this a good review but although it is well written and researched it was just not for me. I usually read a novel in a week or so, this one took me 3 months. A few pages and it was lights out!

In some ways this is a brilliant book, in others it felt disappointing. Kryza's chops as a historian are more than sufficient. His descriptions of the people and places of 19th century Africa carry me there. I can find no fault in his prose or his writing. But when he writes the close of Lang's adventure, where the historical record is difficult to be certain about, Kryza does not stay with the explorer. Instead he relays knowledge of the events as they gradually surfaced to Lang's Wife and to his Father-in-Law. I wish Kryza had, instead, kept the narrative with Lang to the end, even though that would mean invention of further detail.

This is a historical novel, and at the conclusion of the book, where I wanted it to be most like a novel, it because most like a history instead.I do want that story, the long silence, the controversy over the papers, in the story.

Consider another historical novel I just recently read, Devil in the White City; the author explains in a footnote how he invented the personal, dramatic detail of a character's death. Surely any historian reading this would forgive Kryza's invention of the detail so the central figure in this tragedy would not die offstage?

The book, taken as a whole, is well written and well researched. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys distant places or unknown histories.

One third of this book is a 4 star read, the middle part. The start of it is kind of disconnected, going every which way, but although not a pleasure to read, it became the background I needed to develop the sense of this exotic time and place. Once into the race between these amazing explorers it was hard to put down. This is North Africa, the Sahara, early 19th century, before colonization, where slaving still exists, where the locals are..... I just can't find the words. But that's the best part, experiencing this place at that time and the people who lived it. Jaw-dropping maybe would describe it best. Why would a sane person venture into that? But then, exploration means not knowing what is waiting for you.
The last bit is tedious but, I admit, quite necessary. Just too long for what it was worth.
All together a very satisfying read. Worth the effort and very memorable.

Excellent book for the armchair explorer, like myself. The narrative of this book takes place in the early 1820's when European explorers were seeking to find out the nature and extent of various rivers, mountains, and other geographical features of the planet. In this case the British government was seeking to know the course and terminus of the Niger River in West Africa. The explorers highlighted in this book walk across the Sahara desert to find Timbuktu and hopefully link up with the Niger River on the way. In the course of their various ramblings they stumble on to Lake Chad, find that 80% of the Sahara desert is actually rocky plains as barren as the surface of Mars, and eventually find the fabled city of Timbuktu. So, gentle reader, if you like a well written history of far away places in former times, this may be the book for you.

Really enjoyed this. Back in the 18th and 19th century, more was known about the face of the moon than the interior of Africa. Good fact that. So Victorians, with their sense of order and derring do - combined of course with superiority and racism set out to discover the lost city of Timbuktu (which may have been a surprise to its residents, who must have felt they always knew where they were). Anyway, well know fact in those days that you weren't anywhere until a white bloke wandered in and said you were now an official somewhere.

Those guys were hardy, resourceful, plucky, greedy, evil, good or some combination, but they were all a bit mental. And this is their story, concentrating on Alexander Gordon Laing, the first man to reach Timbuktu, as well as previous expeditions - (Mungo Park and the Denham, Clapperton and Oudney expedtiions- with Denham winning the dubious award of most odious malevolent person to step out of Britain in that (possibly most) era. And frankly I'd include fiction as well as non-fiction there.

Anyway, the events this chronicals are hard edged explorations, dangers and dealings with the locals, and with the UK Consul in Tripoli, Warrington, a major (in every sense) character throughout the whole period, it would actually be difficult to make these larger than life characters dull. Which thankfully the book doesn't do. Quite the opposite, it picks up pace through to Timbuktu, and I found really keeps the interest for a lengthy debate started by Warrington accusing the foul French had absconded with some priceless papers that clouded relations, and made things...rather interesting.

Clips along nicely, with good use of the original surviving letters, but with an accessible, not overly academic style (but copious notes if you like that sort of thing). Recommended.

The beginning and end of this book are difficult to get through. It's the juicy middle that's entertaining. The first third of the book works its way through a long line of unfortunate explorers. After a while, I found it tough to get invested in any character because I figured he wouldn't live more than a few pages. These stories demonstrated just how daunting it was to get to Timbuktu. It was satisfying when the author finally focused on a team that made some headway into the interior of the continent. I enjoyed hearing about their interactions with one another and with their African hosts. It was especially interesting to learn about African leaders' initial reactions upon meeting them. The Europeans were part extra-terrestrial and part ominous prelude to Africa's foreign relations. The anxiety was especially on the minds of those Africans who had heard about Great Britain's work in India. All this goes to show that there was a lot more to this book than a simple race to find an exotic city. It was a pivotal moment in history for two continents. The end of the book lost me though. It got really overbearing with the many details of the Timbuktu quest's post mortem. It was an unsatisfying conclusion in light of all the general themes that the author could have reinforced, touching on colonialism and European urges to gather Africa's resources. This was a good book, but you have to be willing to skim when the details get overwhelming.

Interesting topic but not compellingly written, as I recall.

Having been piqued with a recent fetish for African exploration and discovery by Europeans as well as the pre-existing cultures, kingdoms and peoples, I grabbed for The Race for Timbuktu, a book I acquired long ago just as a similar desire flamed out and left it gathering dust on my to-read shelf.

So, when my yearning was rekindled this past year, I eagerly snatch up The Race for Timbuktu, ready to dive in. (You see, wife, this is why I get so many more books when I still haven’t started the other ones I got the last time … reading the right book is about opportunity, mood, and availability of text--I can’t always predict the first two, but I can facilitate the latter. This is a conversation we’ve had before that I’ve failed to adequately explain, so this book is kind of my star witness. No further questions … and no cross examination!)

For me, however, I more felt that this would be a dutiful, fact-finding read. No one had recommended it. I didn’t really research it at all besides doing a general search on the Internet and figuring, through the description, that this ought to cover things pretty well. Basically, I felt that I would enjoy the information I gathered from it, but it would not be the kind of book I’d try to foist upon others.

Boy was I surprised when I actually found the background info on African exploration being fascinating, if not exciting. It’s tragic and harrowing how many waves of explorers got swallowed up by the interior of Africa … and how relentless the British/Europeans were in rounding up and sending more into the front lines of battle, even without waiting for the success or failure of the previous.

Then Kyrza gets to the meat of the tale: the breakdown of Clapperton and Laing’s individual quests to find the mouth of the Niger and to locate the legendary African city, Timbuktu. I was in awe. Both of them faced daunting, though highly different, tasks (jungle survival versus desert survival). Both of them succeeded in some measure thanks to their passionate determination. Most of all, Kyrza allows the most distinct character of these stories to take precedence--the setting. Whether in the disease-ridden, jungle-mobbed West African coast or in the heat-seared sprawling expanse-of-nothing Saharan desert, Kyrza makes you feel the harsh reality of these fringe areas of Mother Nature’s most uncultured side.

So amazing was his storytelling, that at one point I thought I had to be in fiction story territory. One of the characters being left for dead, yet not only surviving but pushing on. Later, I would question the true ending of the story for a couple of chapters, fully expecting a twist ending in the vein of a mystery novel. So devastating were some events, one in particular, that after reading, it threw me off for half the day as I mourned for a tragic turn of events that seemed unfair to me. What a wonderful mixture of researching a story worth telling, and then finding a way to tell it right.

Having said that, Kyrza is not perfect. In fact, in some ways, he feels quite amateur. Some of the cobbling together of tales are sloppy enough that they needlessly repeat details, chapters apart from each other. The focus of some chapters seem to be built into a bigger whole, while others are strangely isolated or thematically irrelevant. When I read his afterword and saw how many hands touched the manuscript, how many people helped to decide the direction of the research and narrative, and his own journey and motivation in writing it, that made the discombobulated feel of the book make more sense, even if it did not fix some of the overarching problems.

While that does affect the reading experience, however, Kyrza succeeds even where he may not intend to. The strength of the stories he innately sensed as being powerful, his own contribution to the inhospitable setting that is West Africa’s interior, and the characters that he wisely allowed to tell the tale--all these make for an exciting, daredevil ride. In fact, it’s so thrilling that you’d read it for fiction enjoyment alone. But don’t. Read it for enjoyment, and then be amazed that it’s really non-fiction after all!