Death in the Sahara: The Lords of the Desert and the Timbuktu Railway Expedition Massacre

By Michael Asher and Dean King

The desert explorer and author of Khartoum recounts the disastrous nineteenth century French expedition to establish a Trans-Saharan Railway.
 
In 1880, the French government ordered a surveying expedition for a railway that would transport the fabulous wealth of Timbuktu to Paris—and spread French culture and morality among the Sahara Desert’s nomadic tribes. Expecting to find riches for his country and immortal glory for himself, French Army veteran Paul Flatters led a crew of a hundred men into a horrifyingly deadly fiasco.
 
Under-armed in hostile territory, and foolishly employing the enemy as guides, the expedition was ambushed and stranded without camels or supplies in the deserts of southern Algeria. Many were killed outright, and for four months the survivors were menaced by the Tuareg, the “lords of the desert,” robbed, starved, and tricked into eating poisoned fruit.
 
To escape, the men hid in the wastelands of the Sahara with little hope of finding food or water. They were finally forced to eat their own dead, or, worse, the merely weak. Only a dozen malnourished men lived to tell their tale of their harrowing, one-thousand-mile journey. With a “superb grip of narrative and uncanny ability to evoke battle scenes,” historian and desert explorer Michael Asher has written an amazing true story that is as dramatic as it is frightening (The Guardian).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 17, 2008
• ISBN: 9781510720169

Reviews for Death in the Sahara

[johnthefireman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent book, written in an exciting and readable style. It tells the story of French attempts to survey a railway route across the Sahara to Timbuctoo, southwards through Tuareg territory. The massacre of a French column led ultimately to the subjugation of the Tuareg, although the railway was never built as by that time air transport had intervened.My one complaint is the map. While it is quite comprehensive, it does not include all the places mentioned in the text and, as such, is quite irritating.

[john5918 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent book, written in an exciting and readable style. It tells the story of French attempts to survey a railway route across the Sahara to Timbuctoo, southwards through Tuareg territory. The massacre of a French column led ultimately to the subjugation of the Tuareg, although the railway was never built as by that time air transport had intervened.My one complaint is the map. While it is quite comprehensive, it does not include all the places mentioned in the text and, as such, is quite irritating.