It's a good book, as they all are, but the portrayal of Timbuktu as a center of culture, learning, commerce and communication is particularly vivid, and directly challenges any perception of pre-colonisation Africa as somehow backward and savage. On the other hand the violence and illness endured by the protagonist and his friends are pretty graphically portrayed as well, so there is a certain squick factor. Still, very much recommended.
Scales of Gold, by Dorothy Dunnett
It's a good book, as they all are, but the portrayal of Timbuktu as a center of culture, learning, commerce and communication is particularly vivid, and directly challenges any perception of pre-colonisation Africa as somehow backward and savage. On the other hand the violence and illness endured by the protagonist and his friends are pretty graphically portrayed as well, so there is a certain squick factor. Still, very much recommended.
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Gemini, by Dorothy Dunnett
Second paragraph of third chapter: As they progressed, Nicholas kept seeing faces he knew. A goldsmith. A shipmaster. A chorister from Trinity…
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Caprice and Rondo, by Dorothy Dunnett
Second paragraph of third chapter: Because the Mission travelled by road and arrived, by intent, on the Sabbath, its ears and eyes were spared the…
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To Lie With Lions, by Dorothy Dunnett
Second paragraph of third chapter: Nicholas de Fleury was not brought to Ham in bonds, nor deprived of his senses, but he was under guard, and had…
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