Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer

"It's the inner journey that resonates most in this sweeping biography of a late exemplar of the British yen for exotic self-exile. Wilfred Thesiger (1910 — 2003), best known for epic crossings of Arabia's Empty Quarter along with classic travel memoirs and photos of his sojourns in the Middle East and Africa, was a rather minor explorer of an already well-surveyed 20th-century globe. What he sought was less a specific destination than backward tribal societies still imbued with the kind of 'barbaric splendor... savagery and color' that was fast dying out in the machine age. (He did discover and attach himself to a string of handsome tribal youths and eventually developed a sideline in adolescent circumcisions.) Maitland (Speke and the Discovery of the Source of the Nile), Thesiger's longtime friend and editor, serves up a vivid account of his adventures and a perceptive portrait of a complex man — ebullient hunter, repressed homosexual, man's man, and spiritual seeker who hoped that desert sand would scour clean his soul. The narrative is a ramble; as one Thesiger trek swirls into the next, it becomes clear that his life story isn't really going anywhere. Still, the scenery is magnificent, and Thesiger makes for a charismatic travel companion. Photos. (July)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.