![]() Perhaps as a corrective to the Anglocentrism of earlier accounts, she brings a third figure into the foreground: Sidi Mubarak Bombay, a formerly enslaved African who acted as guide and interpreter for Burton, Speke and several other explorers over the years. ![]() And while her book is neither as infectiously readable as Moorehead’s (which is now outdated) nor as comprehensive and deeply researched as Jeal’s, she does add a new dimension to the story. With her new book, “ River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile,” she takes a similar slice-of-the-story approach to the decades-long Nile drama, focusing on the bitter rivalry between explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke. Now enter Candice Millard, who has made a specialty of writing about individual episodes in the lives of colorful historical figures such as Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. ![]() ![]() Given the depth of this fascination, it’s not surprising that many books have been written about this holy grail of Victorian exploration - notable among them “ The White Nile” by Alan Moorehead (1960) and “ Explorers of the Nile” by Tim Jeal (2011). ![]()
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