Adam Nichols

I’m a Professor Emeritus with the University of Maryland. I spent ten years teaching for the University’s European division in England, Scotland, Iceland, and Germany, and another ten years downrange on military installations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. I then taught stateside for almost twenty years. I’ve also lived and worked in Norway, Australia, China, and Canada. I now still live in the US.

While living in Europe during the nineties and early 2000s, I published five epic fantasy novels with Orion/Gollancz, U.K.:

The War of the Lords Veil

The Pathless Way

The Paladin

The Songster

The Curer

These titles are out of print now, but they still show up on Amazon, though in a rather random way—you can never be sure which ones are currently available.

More recently, I’ve been writing a series of historical non-fiction books about Barbary corsairs with an Icelandic colleague of mine named Karl Smári Hreinsson.

The first book, titled The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson: The Story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on Iceland in 1627, tells the story of (believe it or not) a pair of raids made by Barbary corsairs—north African pirates—on Iceland in the summer of 1627.

Since then, Karl and I have written four more books about these raids:

Northern Captives: The Story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on Grindavík in 1627

Stolen Lives: The Story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on Heimaey in 1627

Enslaved: The Story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on East Iceland in 1627

Turbulent Times: Skálholt and the Barbary Corsair Raids on Iceland in 1627

These four books are all narrative histories. That is, they recount events in novelistic fashion, focusing on the people involved.

My most recent book is:

Corsairs and Captives: Narrative from the Age of the Barbary Corsairs

This book features a collection of narratives, all derived from first-hand historical accounts, that deal with everything from descriptions of brutal sea battles to accounts vividly conveying what it was like to be a slave in North Africa. Most of these tales are entirely new to English readers and include translations from Dutch, Spanish, and French documents that appear in English for the first time.

I also keep a blog that deals with Barbary corsairs and related matters. You can find it by Googling 'Corsairs and Captives'.