Book description
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.
Tim Mackintosh-Smith's first book, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land,
won the 1998 Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Award and is now
regarded as a classic of Arabian description. His two books on Ibn
Battutah's adventures in the old Islamic world and in India, Travels
with a Tangerine and The Hall of a Thousand Columns, were received to
huge critical acclaim. His journeys in search of Ibn Battutah have also
been turned into a major BBC television series that has fascinated
viewers round the globe. For the past twenty-five years his home has
been the Yemeni capital San'a, where he lives in a tower-house on top of
the ancient Sabaean city and next door to the modern donkey market.
