{
    "id": 316870,
    "slug": "book-smugglers-of-timbuktu",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu",
    "subtitle": null,
    "collection_title": null,
    "collection_part_number": null,
    "annotation": null,
    "description": "<p><span>Two tales of a city: The historical race to reach one of the world&rsquo;s most mythologized places, and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda, added another layer to the legend.</span><br /><span>To Westerners, the name &ldquo;Timbuktu&rdquo; long conjured a tantalising paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for &ldquo;discovery&rdquo; tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way too. A medieval centre of learning, it was home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts, on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology, and astronomy. When al-Qaeda&ndash;linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these precious documents, a remarkable thing happened: a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding.</span><br /><span>Relying on extensive research and firsthand reporting, Charlie English expertly twines these two suspenseful strands into a fascinating account of one of the planet's extraordinary places, and the myths from which it it has become inseparable.</span></p>",
    "additional_content": null,
    "bestseller_60": null,
    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 416,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "2017-05-04",
    "publication_date_latest": "2017-05-04",
    "cover_url": null,
    "editions": [
        {
            "isbn": "9780008184902",
            "product_form": "BC"
        }
    ],
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    "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:17:28+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-11-08T00:24:57+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 4169,
        "slug": "harper-collins-uk",
        "name": "Harper Collins UK",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:08:37+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T15:12:58+00:00"
    },
    "contributors": [
        {
            "id": 189152,
            "slug": "charlie-english",
            "key_names": "English",
            "names_before_key": "Charlie",
            "prefix_to_key": null,
            "contributor_role": "A01",
            "readable_contributor_role": "Author"
        }
    ],
    "genres": [],
    "subjects": [
        {
            "scheme_identifier": "32",
            "scheme_version": null,
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            "subject_code": "320",
            "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:17:28+00:00",
            "updated_at": "2025-09-19T13:17:28+00:00"
        }
    ],
    "tags": [],
    "campaigns": []
}