The Blue Nile.
Authored by Alan Moorehead.
The Blue Nile is a relic from the past that draws a blank when inquired about in present day bookstores. Few have heard of it. Fewer have read it. Even less are aware it exists. Yet the sweeping saga, brilliantly penned and first published in 1962, remains without a contender that dares to challenge, be it history or storytelling.
It’s author, Alan Moorehead, a World War 2 correspondent who covered the death and destruction as it steamrolled across the Middle East and Asia almost from the beginning to the end, is a master storyteller.
Curating facts from a subject that makes school boys emit loud yawns to express their disdain and enrolling the help of men and women like the noted explorer Colonel R.E Cheesman who was instrumental in shedding light on the river in the 1930s, Moorhead fills in gaps with imaginative deductions and puts together this acclaimed masterpiece that changes the very nature of gaining information of long gone days.
The Blue Nile is a classic that takes readers on a vividly descriptive journey that courses from the Sudan into Egypt. En route, it recounts the exploits of early white geographers obsessed with discovering the source of its namesake river, their vanity, hardships and follies. Cascades gently, as Napoleon with his newly formed French revolutionary army marches to battle the homosexual Mamelukes entrenched in ancient Cairo. Washes ashore to the rule of Turkish overlords, petty and violent. And draws to rest with the arrival of the British in Ethiopia.
Like the river itself, the story flows in an easy and unobstructed manner appending the classic with a hard to put down label. Highly informative and documenting events, turmoils, the people and the times, the book is a traveler’s bible that enriches exploration of the ancient river and its banks – that over the centuries has seen the rise and fall of civilizations.
