Timbuctoo

Africa, Slavery and the British Regency were what John O'Neill Walsh and Robert Adams, the hero of Tahir Shah's first novel had in common. Inspired by a true story, Timbuctoo tells of a young American sailor, shipwrecked off the west coast of Africa. Captured by Moors, he begins a nightmarish journey through the Sahara, enduring privation, brutality, loneliness, terror and temptation. He manages to survive only because he succeeds in keeping alive hope of reaching home and being reunited with his dearly beloved wife, Christina.

When he is eventually redeemed from slavery by the English consul in the Moroccan town of Mogador, he is still unable to return directly to his homeland. England is at war with America, but it is through London he is fated to pass. Picked up, while destitute, by a wealthy Viscount, he is brought before the Royal Committee for Africa to relate his story. It was a time when the interior of the Dark Continent was still unknown. There was an illusion that everything in Timbuctoo was made from gold, and a lust to find the fabled city and exploit its wealth.

As Adams waits for the war between England and America to end, and for a ship to take him home, we are drawn with him deeper and deeper into a Regency London, convincingly depicted in great detail, but not quite the historical city of the time. We meet the rich and powerful with no conception of work, the numerous servants upon whom they rely but who are considered unworthy of notice, the scientific and literary elite represented by Joseph Banks, Lord Byron and Jane Austen, street urchins and ordinary Londoners who earn their living sometimes in very unorthodox ways. We find ourselves inside the doors of some of the grim institutions of the day, Bedlam, the Marshalsea prison, prison ships anchored in the Thames.

Timbuctoo has all the ingredients of a great story: unpredictable events, vivid description, unforgettable characters, humour, mystery. Like Shah's other work, it is rich in symbolism, but its unexpected twists and turns defeat the attempts of the rational mind to decode it. This is a book to be enjoyed while its wisdom is allowed to surface in its own good time.

Tahir Shah decided to publish this book himself, and those of us who looked at his Facebook page could follow the process. There is an electronic edition which costs less than a weekend newspaper. To accompany it there is a very well designed, visually appealing website (timbuctoo.com). The limited edition hardback, recently published, is unlike anything produced by conventional publishers for a couple of centuries. It weighs 2Kg, is made of top quality paper, has marbled endpapers, a silk bookmark and six maps each of which was folded by hand. This is a book which, not only has as its themes Love and Endurance, but was itself created through Love and Endurance.