Part history lesson part adventure story The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu is the story of one man's quest to save the intellectual product of centuries of writers and theologians. I felt like I was reading an adventure novel except it sadly wasn't a novel. The brutality to people and the destruction or attempted destruction of the history of an area and its people happened.
When Al Qaeda jihadists begin their attempt to take over Mali and surrounding areas it becomes clear that the many years of work rescuing, resorting, and preserving centuries of written work, all these manuscripts held by different families and painstakingly gathered by Abdel Kader Haidara were in danger of being destroyed. So he and his associates got to work smuggling them to safety.
With this as the backdrop Hammer also tells the history of the area, of the manuscripts, and of the current rise of extremists in the Sahara.
Not at all a dry history text, but more like an Indiana Jones tale. And I love the title. Some of the most bad-ass people in the world are librarians, many who over the years fight back banning of books and who feed our minds.
(Finished September 13, 2017)
