North Sudan is a largely unknown, thought-to-be-unsafe land. A Glimpse of North Sudan aims to correct that. This book is far more than a travelogue. From diaries and photographs of a safe, non-alcoholic, wonderful holiday, it tells of a short tour of a smiling poor people with an ancient, frequently violent history, pyramids and tombs in royal cemeteries with wonderful paintings and reliefs to behold. It is a largely desert country but where the Blue and White Niles combine to form a majestic life-giving river on its way to the Mediterranean Sea. In addition, there are descriptions of black Sudanese pharaohs of Egypt, the lifestyle of a Bedouin family along with British involvement in ruling the country (a section on the Battle of Omdurman led by Kitchener with a young, ambitious Winston Churchill in the ranks) and of the civil wars since independence in 1956. Finally, it suggests a way out of the cul-de-sac of poverty and deprivation. This book is a must-read for the general-interest reader of a forgotten, though fascinating, land.
