Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land - Softcover

Mackintosh-Smith, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719597404 ISBN 13: 9780719597404

Publisher: John Murray, 2007

Synopsis

Our ideas of the Arabian Peninusula have been hijacked: by images of the desert, by oil, by the Gulf War. But there is another Arabia.For the classical geographers Yemen was a fabulous land where flying serpents guarded sacred incense groves. Medieval Arab visitors told of disappearing islands and menstruating mountains. Vita Sackville-West found Aden 'precisely the most repulsive corner of the world'. Arguably the most fascinating but least known country in the Arab world, Yemen has a way of attracting comment that ranges from the superficial to the wildly fictitious. In Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land, Tim Mackintosh-Smith writes with an intimacy and depth of knowledge gained through over twenty years among the Yemenis. He is a travelling companion of the best sort - erudite, witty and eccentric. Crossing mountain, desert, ocean and three millennia of history, he portrays hyrax hunters and dhow skippers, a noseless regicide, and a sword-wielding tyrant with a passion for Heinz Russian salad. Yet even the ordinary Yemenis are extraordinary: their family tree goes back to Noah and is rooted in a land which, in the words of a contemporary poet, has become the dictionary of its people. Every page of this book is dashed - like the land it describes - with the marvellous.

About this title

About the Author

Tim Mackintosh-Smith studied Classical Arabic at Oxford. At the age of 21, he headed east for the real Arabia. For the past 17 years, he has lived in the Yemeni capital, San'a - a place which has missed out on many of the more awful aspects of the post medieval period. His first book, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land, won the 1998 Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Award and his next book Travels with a Tangerine was critically acclaimed.

From Library Journal

Utilizing his experience of living in Yemen since 1982, Mackintosh-Smith takes readers with him through mountains, deserts, and coastal and inland cities as he travels this unique land. He walks down wadis, rides in cabs and trucks and takes a dhow out to an isolated island. Observations of daily life, such as his section on the subculture of the chewing of qat or kat, the mildly narcotic leaf used by Yemeni men, give a sense of the rich history of this nation, once a humming crossroads for the early trade in myrrh and frankincense. A plethora of unfamiliar names and places can make the history difficult to follow, but patient readers will be rewarded with a witty and humorous travel story. For libraries with literate travel collections.?David Schau, Kanawha Cty. P.L., Charleston, WV
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Murray
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0719597404
• ISBN 13: 9780719597404
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304