The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu: The Quest for this Storied City and the Race to Save Its TreasuresAn exemplary work of investigative journalism that is also a wonderfully colourful book of history and travel Observer, Books of the Year A piece of postmodern historiography of quite extraordinary sophistication and ingenuity [written with] exceptional delicacy and restraint TLS To Westerners, the name Timbuktu long conjured a tantalising paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a