For six years after reading the account of the British North African expedition of 1818-20, Justin Marozzi had longed to cross the Libyan Sahara by camel. Captivated by the beauty of this little-known country on his first visit to Tripoli, he vowed to return to explore its vast desert along the old slave trade routes. South from Barbary - as nineteenth-century Europeans knew North Africa - is the compelling story of his 1,500-mile journey.
More than a travelogue, South from Barbary is a fascinating history of Saharan exploration and efforts by early British explorers to suppress the African slave trade, which many regarded as 'the most gigantic system of wickedness the world ever saw'. It evokes the poetry and solitude of the desert, the misery of the slave trade in action, the companionship of man and beast, the plight of a benighted nation and the humour and generosity of its resilient people.
