The Blue Nile

In The White Nile, one of the most acclaimed and widely read books of recent years, Alan Moorehead described the discovery of the source of the river and the turmoil of events that followed in the second half of the last century. Here he steps back fifty years and deals with the entirely different picture on the Blue Nile and the main stream that descends through Ethiopia, the Sudan and Egypt on its long journey to the Mediterranean. The French invasion of Egypt in 1798, the Turkish conquest of the Sudan in 1821 and he little-known British expedition to Ethiopia in 1868 - these followed in a logical and devastating progression as part of the expansion of the West into territotires which had been forgotten since Roman times or never known at all.

Here is a panorama of glittering colour, pounding excitement and continual fascination and it is dominated by four diverse and enthralling characters who act and react against a background of slavery and massacre, political upheaval and the bloodshed of war; a Scottish adventurer, of great height and massive prejudice, an obscure corporal who became Emperor, a Turkish government official who made his influence felt and feared throughout North Africa, and a black depot prone to the most terrifyingly rapid transitions from overpowering benevolence to murder and destruction on the grandest scale.

Format: Hardback - Good condition for its age

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd

Published: 1962

Original dust jacket