A challenging read

Our book club, with many members who volunteer at our local library, voted to read this book. They universally hated it! Too many unfamiliar names of people and places; too much history of Mali. But they all agreed that they had learned something, from the member who had never heard of Mali, to the members who had only heard of Timbuktu in their youth, as a reference to a far away place. We all know much more about NW Africa, Mali, the struggle that so many Islamic cultures experience with jihadists, and the dedication of one man to save the history an important time and place of intellectual history. A good map or two at the reader's side will make the reading much easier!

I had never heard of the literary and cultural tradition in Timbuktu. Amazing story as how the books were gathered and then smuggled out of Timbuktu to save them from the Islamic jihadists. I would have loved more maps and pictures of the books. Too much details about the fall of the Timbuktu literary age and war with the jihadists.