What the Desert Takes: A Novel of Timbuktu

Three Europeans leave Tripoli in 1850. Five years later, only one of them returns. based on true eventsHeinrich Barth is twenty-nine: brilliant, difficult, and obsessed with getting things exactly right.A Hamburg scholar attached to a British expedition, he is heading south into a region the size of Europe that European maps leave almost blank. He carries twelve pencils, empty notebooks, and a second name.Abd el-Kerim.As a Christian, he may not survive the road.Over the next five years, Barth will nearly die of thirst and cut open his own vein to drink. He will barter with sewing needles where coins are worthless, be robbed, imprisoned in irons, and ride beside a slave-raiding army because it is the only way into a country he is determined to see.He writes down everything.Then, in 1853, he reaches Timbuktu-a city from which few Europeans have returned alive. For eight months, a Muslim scholar named Ahmad al-Bakkay protects him from men who want him dead, argues theology with him, and opens to him something Europe scarcely expects to find there: books.Chronicles.A written history centuries old.But this is not only the story of the man doing the exploring.A thousand miles to the south, Dorugu is twelve years old when horsemen ride out of the dust and destroy his village. He is taken, marched in a wooden yoke, sold three times, and given new names by the men who own him.Eventually, one of Barth's companions buys his freedom.Dorugu becomes a servant, a translator, a traveler-and a witness.Barth measures rivers, kingdoms, prices, languages and stars.Dorugu watches the men who believe they are discovering his world.Years later, the two will reach Europe together. There, Dorugu will be stared at in drawing rooms, questioned by a king, and measured with calipers by a professor.Asked what has surprised him most about Europe, he gives an answer no explorer would think to record.The stairs.And far to the east, another young scientist is riding toward a forbidden mountain-and a death Europe will spend seventeen years trying to understand.Based on the documentary record of one of the most extraordinary journeys of the nineteenth century, What the Desert Takes is historical fiction about exploration, slavery, survival, knowledge-and what happens when the people being observed begin to observe back.It is the story of a man who tried to measure the world.And of a boy who knew that world before anyone thought to put it on a map.One counts the stars. The other never needed to.Nearly all of this happened.Historical fiction - African exploration - survival adventure - based on true events