From the Publisher
In the first decades of the nineteenth century, no place burned more brightly in the imagination of European geographers––and fortune hunters––than the lost city of Timbuktu. Africa's legendary City of Gold, not visited by Europeans since the Middle Ages, held the promise of wealth and fame for the first explorer to make it there. In 1824, the French Geographical Society offered a cash prize to the first expedition from any nation to visit Timbuktu and return to tell the tale.
One of the contenders was Major Alexander Gordon Laing, a thirty–year–old army officer. Handsome and confident, Laing was convinced that Timbuktu was his destiny, and his ticket to glory. In July 1825, after a whirlwind romance with Emma Warrington, daughter of the British consul at Tripoli, Laing left the Mediterranean coast to cross the Sahara. His 2,000–mile journey took on an added urgency when Hugh Clapperton, a more experienced explorer, set out to beat him. Apprised of each other's mission by overseers in London who hoped the two would cooperate, Clapperton instead became Laing's rival, spurring him on across a hostile wilderness.
An emotionally charged, action–packed, utterly gripping read, The Race for Timbuktu offers a close, personal look at the extraordinary people and pivotal events of nineteenth–century African exploration that changed the course of history and the shape of the modern world.
The Washington Post -
Jonathan Yardley
…a lively and informative, if somewhat disorganized, history by a former newspaper reporter and energy specialist. Kryza has spent a lot of time in Africa (he first went there in 1963, when he was in junior high school) and knows it well; he also obviously has spent a lot of time in libraries, researching the copious literature of African exploration. The "race" to Timbuktu he describes seems more a storytelling device than a matter of historical fact, and he does a good deal of hemming and hawing before finally bringing Laing onto center stage, but these narrative shortcomings can be forgiven.
Publishers Weekly
Kryza recreates the bold journeys through the unknown Africa of early 19th-century British explorers Alexander Gordon Laing and Hugh Clapperton, competing to find the fabled city of Timbuktu. Kryza's meticulous research of letters, diaries and official records forms the basis for affecting descriptions of the hazards and horrors the two explorers faced. Kryza, who lived in Africa for 11 years and traveled Laing's route, writes evocatively of the beauty of the African landscape and provides chilling glimpses of the barbarism of the slave trade. He also exposes the unbridgeable cultural gap between 19th-century Muslims in North Africa and the Christian explorers. But what most impresses are the sheer number of ways there were to die in Africa, known as the "White Man's grave"-malaria, dysentery, drowning, parasitic infections and heat stroke were a few of the natural threats, which paled beside the likelihood of being killed by fellow travelers, slavers, bandits or capricious rulers. Kryza (The Power of Light) starts slowly, but when the focus settles on Laing and Clapperton, readers will be eager to find out their fates. 20 b&w illus. Agent, Christy Fletcher. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Kryza's excellent book on the early 19th-century European expeditions to reach Timbuktu and chart the course of the Niger River is a joy to read. The city of Timbuktu today is a fraction of its former splendor, influence, and wealth-the latest population estimate reveals a city of fewer than 30,000 with rampant poverty-but in former days it was legendary, with a huge influence on trade across the Sahara and rumors abounding about gold, ivory, and slaves. The question was how to get there: by sand or sea, or by heading inland from the West African coast with its swamps, natives, and disease. As Timbuktu was only 900 miles from the sea, many expeditions, including the famous Mungo Park expedition, started there but were never heard from again. When the first European, Alexander Gordon Laing, walked into the city in 1826, after spending more than a year crossing the Sahara, he felt a sense of dejection, for he expected more. Dead barely a month later, he never realized his fame. Kryza (The Power of Light), a former journalist, uses the letters, notes, and sketches of Laing and others to detail nearly every day of Laing's journey across the desert. A highly readable addition to public and academic libraries with geographical and African collections.-James Thorsen, May Memorial Lib., Central North Carolina Regional Lib. Syst., Burlington Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A jolly good tale of 19th-century imperial adventure-one that ended badly for just about everyone, but at least satisfied curiosity. Timbuktu, in the heart of what is now Mali, "is an insignificant place, a village that festers, foul-smelling and intractable." So writes old Africa hand Kryza, a onetime reporter and editor for the New Haven Journal-Courier, who ambitiously sets out to follow the traces of 19th-century British travelers seeking the town's whereabouts. They had good reason, too, Kryza writes, for in the Middle Ages, the caravans that would occasionally turn up in places like Algiers and Cairo from Timbuktu were laden with gold, unicorn horns, virgins and other such desirable commodities; tales of the fabled kingdom spread to Europe, and Timbuktu became a byword for the unattainable. Kryza's hero, a Scottish army officer named Alexander Gordon Laing, determined in 1825 that he would in fact attain it, though he faced much opposition and competition at home-a superior officer determined to end his military career, fellow adventurers, a dastardly Frenchman mooning for his wife. He had good things going for him, though: a natural intrepidity, backing by a well-placed nobleman and a historical accident that Kryza gamely notes-the fact that the English, having beaten "Bono Barto, as the Arabs call him," had earned some respect among the desert peoples. Bonaparte was one thing, Laing's rivals another and the Tauregs quite another; as Laing crossed the Sahara on a circuitous fact-gathering mission, he was attacked by Tauregs, who left him with frightful saber cuts and other wounds, after which Laing seems to have thought death not such a bad thing. He found Timbuktu, and in moreopulent condition than Kryza did nearly two centuries after him-and then Laing disappeared. Kryza's ever-competent narrative, drawing on hitherto unavailable documents, closes by examining the possibilities and offering a convincing forensic case concerning his unfortunate end. A treat for fans of Saharan exploration.
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