I love
Tahir Shah's books. They are travelogues that read like fantastic
novels. He is a master storyteller. I wondered what it would be like
if he wrote fiction. His latest book, Timbuctoo
– I'm happy to say, proves him to be an excellent novelist.
It
shouldn't be a surprise -- storytelling is storytelling, be it true or
make-believe.
But
then, this is a true story, that of Robert Adams, “an illiterate
American Sailor, taken as a slave in the Great Zahara and, after
trials and tribulations aplenty, reaching London where he narrated
his tale,” to quote the cover that, in words, does the book more
justice than any image could.
Shah
admits: “I am no historian, and have massaged facts and fictions
into place, re-conjuring history.” Which, of course, in how great
fiction is made.
And
Timbuctoo is great
fiction, a masterpiece of adventure. Tahir Shah deserves a place
beside H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and
Ernest Hemingway
Though
set in 1815, this novel will sweep 21st
century readers along with its smooth style and an ingenious,
interweaving, Arabian Nights storyteller style that zigzags from
Timbuctoo to London.
And this
London is just as strange and exotic as Timbuctoo:
With
Caldecott at its helm, the African Committee was, in Adam's mind,
little better than King Woolo's regime. Both men were repressive in
their own way, champions of avarice and perversion.
It does
for time travel what Tahir Shah's nonfiction books do for global
travel. And even though it takes place early in the steam era, fans of
steampunk will find their universes rocked when they read it. It
makes the alien planets of most space operas look dull.
Having
just returned from wandering the supposed location of North America's
Seven Cities of Gold, Timbuctoo
has the sci-fi trickster in me fantasizing about rumors of cities of
gold on Mars . . .
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