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"Jane Johnson has written a beautifully crafted story that paints a vivid picture and captures the imagination.... The reader can see the colours of sunsets, feel the grittiness of the sand, taste the spices in the bazaar and smell the camel hair blankets in the goatskin tents.... The Salt Road is a book you won't want to end, yet at the same time, you'll be yearning for a satisfying conclusion. This novel will not let you down." Liz Read, The Women's Post
"The Salt Road, like all powerful stories, is about change.... For readers looking to experience a shifting, disappearing world, and to be introduced to an exotic culture with evocative descriptions, The Salt Road is an exhilarating ride. Part historic and part contemporary, with universal themes of betrayal, love, and the anguish caused by human greed, it has an ending rich and fulfilling enough for those who like all their questions answered." Linda Holeman, The Globe and Mail "Jane Johnson (The Tenth Gift) re-works her irresistible cross-cultural magic...in The Salt Road" More magazineIn 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.
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