During the years he spent among the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq—long before they were almost completely wiped out by Saddam Hussein—Wilfred Thesiger came to understand, admire, and share a way of life that had endured for many centuries. Traveling from village to village by canoe, he won acceptance by dispensing medicine and treating the sick. In this account of a nearly lost civilization, he pays tribute to the hospitality, loyalty, courage, and endurance of the people, and describes their impressive reed houses, the waterways and lakes teeming with wildlife, the herding of buffalo and hunting of wild boar, moments of tragedy, and moments of pure comedy in vivid, engaging detail.

“It is one thing to tell the story of an expedition . . . it is quite another to convey the atmosphere. . . . This is a richly rewarding book.”
—The Observer, London

“His voyage through desert waters will remain, like his Arabian Sands, a classic of travel writing.”
—The Times, London

Sir Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) was a British travel writer born in Addis Ababa in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).

Imprint: Penguin Classics
Distributor: Penguin Group USA, Inc
Publication Date: 01-02-2008
Pages: 256
Measurements: 7.82in X 5.14in X 0.67in X 0.55lb