Novel Discussion Book Club - The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer

Meet with the Novel Discussion Book Club on the last Wednesday of every month!

This month's book is The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, and Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer 

To save ancient Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean’s Eleven in this “fast-paced narrative that is…part intellectual history, part geopolitical tract, and part out-and-out thriller” (The Washington Post) from the author of The Falcon Thief.

In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that were crumbling in the trunks of desert shepherds. His goal: preserve this crucial part of the world’s patrimony in a gorgeous library. But then Al Qaeda showed up at the door.

You can request a copy from our catalog here: https://catalog.dallaslibrary.org/polaris/search/title.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.6&pos=1&cn=245741