The Salt Road - Softcover

Johnson, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141040238 ISBN 13: 9780141040233

Publisher: Penguin, 2011

Synopsis

Jane Johnson's The Salt Road is a magical historical adventure which brings the most unlikely of people together in an epic quest that spans the decades and the hot, shifting sands of Morocco.

'My dear Isabelle, in the attic you will find a box with your name on it.'

Isabelle's archaeologist father dies leaving a puzzle: a mysterious African amulet. But what is it? And why did he want her to have it? On impulse she takes a plane to Morocco to find out.

But has Isabelle's curiosity got the better of her?

Almost killed in an accident which damages the amulet (revealing more of its secrets), she realises she must be careful. But when her rescuer, Taïb, who knows the dunes and their peoples, offers to help uncover the amulet's history, she cannot resist uncovering the story of Tin Hanan - She of the Tents - who made a legendary desert crossing alone, and her descendant Mariata.

Across years and over hot, shifting sands, tracking the Salt Road, the stories of Isabelle and Taïb, Mariata and her lover, become entangled with that of the lost amulet.

It is a tale of souls wounded by history and of love blossoming on barren ground.

Praise for Jane Johnson:

'An exotic page-turner that links the fates of two women' Woman & Home

'A magical Moroccan adventure . . . unputdownable' She

'An unashamedly escapist page-turner that will be enjoyed by fans of Kate Mosse' Daily Mail

'Atmospheric and hugely romantic' Marie Claire

Jane Johnson is from Cornwall and worked for many years in London. In 2005 she was in Morocco researching the story of a distant ancestor kidnapped by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery - the basis of her first novel, The Tenth Gift - when a near-fatal climbing accident caused her to rethink her future. She returned home, gave up her office job in London and moved to Morocco - where she found and married her Berber husband. Her third novel, The Sultan's Wife is set in sixteenth century Morocco and England and is published by Penguin.

About this title

Review:

Beautifully written, first-class escapism (Mail on Sunday)

Atmospheric and a hugely romantic adventure (Marie Claire)

I finished reading The Salt Road, with its tiny glimpses of your own story, and which I loved. The descriptions were so vivid I wanted to climb into the book (Brian Patten)

From the Author:

At the heart of THE SALT ROAD lies an epic romance and an epic journey. It is a novel about hope after despair, and the sort of deep happiness that comes only after danger and struggle. As the Dalai Lama says: great love and great achievements involve great risk, and that is something I have come to believe.

In 2005 I travelled to Morocco to research the book that was to become THE TENTH GIFT. The only person free to accompany me was my climbing partner: my bribe to him was to go climbing once I had completed my research in Rabat-Salé. And so we headed to a remote village in the foothills of the Anti-Atlas Mountains, and there I was to experience something that was to change my life. We tackled a tough climb, got benighted on it and almost died. There was snow on the summit, and way down in the dark. We had only the clothes on our backs, no food and no choice but to spend the night on the mountain.

It was impossible to sleep: the ledge we were on was small and precarious, and it was freezing. I thought about my job in publishing, London, meetings, etc, and it all seemed rather dull and distant. I vowed that if I survived I would quit full-time publishing and make a new life for myself. I didn't know exactly what that would entail, but the face of a local Berber tribesman I had met the previous day kept floating through my waking dreams all that long night.

6 months later Abdellatif and I were married.

I quit my job, sold my London flat, shipped the contents to Morocco and set up home with Abdel in a remote mountain village where I am the only European woman living in a traditional Muslim culture. Our nearest supermarket is 100 miles away over the mountains: it's been quite a life change. And a wonderful gift of inspiration for a writer, for my husband's family roots lie among the Tuareg: nomads and traders who plied the caravan routes across the Sahara Desert.

One day Abdel came back from his ancestral house with what looked like a great brick of rock crystal. This, he told me was pure desert salt almost 100 years old, from the time when his great-grandfather was a trader on the salt road. Fascinated, I began to research the desert nomads - the Tuareg - and thus the seeds of THE SALT ROAD were sown.

You will have seen images of Tuareg tribesmen in robes and indigo turbans which leave only their eyes uncovered. Yet in contrast, the women go unveiled, highly unusual in Muslim North Africa; as is their matrilineal culture. In the 19th century the Tuareg were the kings of the desert: they roamed far and wide across the Sahara with their flocks and herds; they governed the trade routes and the hidden wells without which no one can survive in the desert, and were free from interference or influence from the modern world. Gradually their rights and territories have been eroded; their way of life has been threatened, their lands appropriated by mining companies and governments; and drought has further endangered the few who are left.

The UN has designated the Tuareg a `Fourth World nation': by definition an internationally unrecognized nation maintaining a distinct political culture within the states which claim their territories. The Tuareg are engaged in a struggle to gain some degree of sovereignty over their national homeland: their struggle has led to many incidents defined as terrorism by those opposed to granting the nomads their territorial and human rights. It's a struggle largely invisible to the outside world: but at one iconic moment saw a rebel band of Tuareg warriors face up the full might of the army of Mali, tanks and all.

The Tuareg are a proud and fascinating people and I spent two long years researching their culture and history, which form the background to THE SALT ROAD. It is an act of monstrous hubris to write a novel set in a culture of which I have no first hand experience (though I did spend 3 weeks trekking with a nomad family in the Sahara). But as an artist, as the wife of a tribesman and as a political being, these remarkable people fire me with passion, and I hope very much that readers will enjoy this passionate adventure of the heart as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0141040238
• ISBN 13: 9780141040233
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400