Product Description

Yemen is arguably the most fascinating and least known country in the Arab world. Classical geography described it as a fabulous land where flying serpents guarded incense groves. Medieval Arab visitors told of disappearing islands and menstruating mountains. Our current ideas of this country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula have been overrun by images of the desert, by oil, by the Gulf War-but there is another Arabia. Writing with an intimacy and a depth of knowledge gained through thirteen years among the Yemenis, Mackintosh-Smith is a traveling companion of the best sort-erudite, witty, and eccentric. Crossing mountain, desert, ocean, and three millennia of history, he reveals a land that, in the words of a contemporary poet, has become the dictionary of its people. In Yemen: The Unknown Arabia we witness the extraordinary in the ordinary. Yemen is a part of Arabia, but it is like no place on earth, and Yemen is a book in which every page is filled-like the land it describes-with the marvelous.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #528369 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

Amazon.com
Englishman Tim Mackintosh-Smith was studying Arabic at Oxford when he visited Yemen, a forgotten country at the heel of the Arabian peninsula, and became obsessed with the place and its language. He's lived there since 1982, and this book--marketed as travel writing but more a blend of personal memoir and national history--is the result. There are certainly travel episodes, such as a trip to the remote island of Susqatra where the Gulf of Aden meets the Indian Ocean. Yet Yemen is more the product of a man gone native than a visitor with an itinerary. Indeed, Mackintosh-Smith offers a forthright defense of the country's lotus-like drug culture, which centers on qat, a leaf that produces a narcotic effect when chewed. "We qat chewers, if we are to believe everything that is said about us, are at best profligates, at worst irretrievable sinners," he writes. Although international health officials have warned against the drug, Mackintosh-Smith assures us this is all "quasi-scientific poppycock." The leaf, he says, helps its users to "think, work, and study." Yemen is surely an exotic land, and one of its charms--fully revealed in Mackintosh-Smith's digressive prose--is the way it has remained quaintly Arabic and seemingly immune to the modern forces transforming its neighbors. Well-received upon its initial publication in the United Kingdom, Yemen may come to be recognized as a small classic. --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly
Against the advice of his Arabic teacher ("Why don't you go somewhere respectable?"), Mackintosh-Smith decided to go to Yemen in 1982 and has "been there ever since." As a result, this is no ordinary travelogue, but an impressionistic exploration of a non-Western land by an experienced observer. A latter-day Lawrence of Arabia without the military exploits, the author has taken up many of the customs of his adoptive land: he's become addicted to qat, a plant that is chewed, often in groups, for its calming effects. The book, a bestseller in Britain, takes the reader on Mackintosh-Smith's travels throughout this south Arabian land, introducing the reader to both wizened Yemenis and the perils of roughing it--even in the late 20th century--throughout a mainly unexplored land. Sleepless nights on rocky inclines mix with desert heat and scorpions on one trip through the countryside, while an odd visit to a Yemeni dancing club highlights his trip to the city of Aden. An engaging writer with a journalist's eye for detail, Mackintosh-Smith never loses his sense of humor: his description of his visit to an English class, where the teacher asks the students, "How many noses does Professor Tim have?" is sidesplitting. The book offers an opportunity for dedicated armchair travelers to delight in a land few Westerners will actually visit. One warning: the author intersperses some history and politics among his travels, but the lay reader is advised to keep a reference source handy. Etchings by Martin Yeoman. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Jason Goodwin
Mackintosh-Smith seems incapable of writing a dull sentence, and in him the scholar, the linguist and the storyteller swap hats with marvelous speed.

Customer Reviews

Travels in Dictionary Land, if by another name
Very much a British Arabist travelogue, and as Sir Charles Doughty, Sir Richard Burton, Wilfred Thesiger, Freya Stark, and T.E. Lawrence-- and perhaps less fervently so Jonathan Raban-- have demonstrated the past century-and-a-half, Mackintosh-Smith takes the trouble to enter the culture. He learns the language, and this account of what the British edition called "Travels in Dictionary Land" is what made me seek this book out. His explanation of the nuances and ambiguities of Arabic remains, five years at least since I read this, the most vivid characteristic of this narrative.

His visit to the island of Socotra, by its natural contrasts with mainland Yemen, intrigued me. Here, perhaps freed from some of the constraints of the interior of the nation, it appeared to me that the author allowed himself a sense of adventure that parts of the dominant narrative, landlocked, did not spark in him. He does make you wonder, as with many earlier British Arabists, about his motives in separating himself from his native land. His reserve remains coy, although it appears that part of this may be--as with some of his predecessors-- that his sexuality may lead him into compromising or dangerous situations. This is hinted at more than discussed and adds a frisson to this somewhat antique mode of storytelling of a foreigner's long sojourns, his nearly three decades spent in such forbidding lands, trying to "pass."

This and his sequel of sorts (also reviewed by me) "Travels with a Tangerine" which attempts to follow the medieval Ibn Batutta's route across Asia, are recommended with therefore slight reservation. The amount of disclosure on the part of those he meets balances with the author's own reticence. He deploys himself rigorously, and part of the charm and a bit of the frustration of his two books taken together is this stance that he assumes.

eh
I suppose I expected a bit more with this book, I mean, it was okay...the author provided a concise conveyance of the history and culture, but I have a hard time believing that the Yemenis are steeped in such ridiculous superstition (mostly because I'm of Yemenite descent myself.) I further was deeply annoyed by his generalist comments not only concerning the Yemeni people, but particularly the Hadramis; for me it bordered on rascist. I also which he spoke more about the people and customs of Socotra, and what the indigenous Socotri language sounded like as opposed to Arabic. But obviously the author loves his adopted homeland or he would've left it a long time ago.

Entertaining travelogue about Yemen
This is a travelogue of a Brit's visit to and exploration of Yemen. The author paints a beautiful and romantic picture of Yemen with text that is both easy and enjoyable to read. I knew virtually nothing about Yemen before reading this book, and I purchased it from Amazon on a whim. I was not disappointed. Although there is some discussion of history and politics in this book, the author's primary emphasis is describing the scenery, the people, and the culture that he has experienced on his travels. If the author's goal was to convey a bit of the complexity of Yemeni culture, some of the natural beauty of the Yemeni landscape to a Western audience, and a part of the rich history of Yemen, he has succeeded. I found the author's description of a sailing trip to Suqutra, an island off the coast of Yemen, to be particularly evocative. The `ritual' of qat was also surprising and interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about Yemen from a Westerner's viewpoint, particularly if one looking for an entertaining, not scholarly, account. Some of the less enthusiastic reviews of this book state that the account is too idealistic. This is probably a fair criticism, but I do not view this as a drawback in this type of book.