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.
Eric and Clare Lowry, both alumni of Trinity College, Dublin, and respectively a chartered accountant and a solicitor, are adventurous travellers. From Luang Prabang in Laos to the River Napo in Ecuador, from the icebergs in Patagonia to the lagoon of Aitutaki in the Cook Islands, from Aleppo in Syria to the Christian sunken churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia, they each while travelling write daily diaries. Advised by family and friends to avoid Sudan, they set out in November 2017 for a short holiday there. By combining both their diaries and a little history, this book relates their safe experience of a fascinating, forgotten and largely unknown land.
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17 reviews
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I congratulate you both for a fascinating insight into a country I knew so little about both now and of its history. It’s more than just a glimpse. I feel that you conveyed the experience and its charms (and its deficiencies) extremely well.
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The excellent photographs bring it all to life!
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“I was amazed at the depth of your research and how much you packed into your short stay in the country. Also found your epilogue most interesting and especially the part played by tribal loyalties in that part of the world. The British idea of indirect rule was a template that other countries should have followed”.
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“Have enjoyed it. The front cover is most evocative. I was quite unaware of the tradition of pyramids elsewhere than in Egypt, and all the more startled to read that a plunderer had been decapitating the ones in North Sudan. Nor had I ever thought about the relative pleasures of motoring across desert sands as opposed to the good tarmac. And lots more to entertain and inform. Smiled at the evocation of young Winston Churchill”.
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“Thank you for opening my eyes and very well done”.
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“We loved reading your book”.
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" I'm really enjoying 'A Glimpse of North Sudan' and the photos are fabulous"
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"I enjoyed your book immensely; it opened up a new world to me providing historical background to current events I have struggled to understand without that. When I was a boy, my father took me to see a former senior colleague on the medical staff in the department of health who was a World War One veteran; he told us about fighting at Omdurman and I recall him saying that the [Al Mahdis] was the bravest soldiers he ever knew".
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