Yemen - Tim Mackintosh-Smith

'Assured and agile: witty, quirky, gossipy, learned, poetic . . . His knowledge of both the language and the culture is clearly breathtaking, yet not once does he force this on the reader . . . He travels the mountains, the desert, the sea, chews qat, is garrulous and likeable. He brings Yemen, a country little known or understood, to vivid life. He has created a work that will endure' The Times

'Medieval history, pre-Islamic myth, the gossip of the market-place, politics and personal experience have all been pressed into a rattlingly funny, learned and readable impression of a place where "the past is not another country" nor merely a few centuries old' Independent

'There is great learning here, modestly worn, as well as wit and amusing anecdote . . . It is indeed worthy of a place on the shelves next to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Wilfred Thesiger' Scotsman

'This is a book a publisher couldn't commission, a book no author could set out to write, a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence . . . Mackintosh-Smith's achievement is to create an entertaining and enlightened view of Yemen, free from the familiar prejudices about Arabs, touched instead by sophistication and savagery, by grim reality and fabulous tales. This is a masterful first book' Sunday Times