TIMBUCTOO

TIMBUCTOO

Being a Singular and Most Animated Account of 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<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />US Version.<br /><br />For centuries, the greatest explorers of their age were dispatched from the power-houses of Europe — London, Paris and Berlin — on a quest unlike any other: To be the first white Christian to visit, and then to sack, the fabled metropolis of Timbuctoo.<br /><br />Most of them never returned alive.<br /><br />At the height of the Timbuctoo Mania, two hundred years ago, it was widely believed that the elusive Saharan city was fashioned in entirety from the purest gold — everything from the buildings to the cobble-stones, from the buckets to the bedsteads were said to be made from it.<br /><br />One winter night in 1815, a young illiterate American seaman named Robert Adams was discovered half-naked and starving on the snow-bound streets of London. His skin seared from years in the African desert, he claimed to have been a guest of the King of Timbuctoo.<br /><br />At a time when anything American was less than popular, the loss of the colony still fresh in British minds, the thought of an American claiming anything — let alone the greatest prize in exploration — was abhorrent in the extreme.<br /><br />Closing ranks against their unwelcome American guest, the British Establishment lampooned his tale, and began a campaign of discrediting him, one that continues even today.<br /><br />An astonishing tale based on true-life endurance, Timbuctoo brilliantly recreates the obsessions of the time, as a backdrop for one of the greatest love stories ever told.