To the Moon and Timbuktu: A Trek Through the Heart of Africa

by Nina Sovich

Nina Sovich had always yearned for adventures in faraway places; she imagined herself leading the life of a solitary traveler. Yet at the age of thirty-four, she found herself married and contemplating motherhood. Catching her reflection in a window spotted with Paris rain, she no longer saw the fearless woman who spent her youth travelling in Cairo, Lahore, and the West Bank staring back at her. Unwittingly, she had followed life’s script, and now she needed to cast it out.

Inspired by female explorers like Mary Kingsley, who explored Gabon’s jungle in the 1890s, and Karen Blixen, who ran a farm in Kenya during World War I, Sovich packed her bags and hopped on the next plane to Africa in search of adventure.

To the Moon and Timbuktu takes readers on a fast-paced trek through Western Sahara, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, bringing their textures and flavors into vivid relief. On Sovich’s travels, she encounters rough-and-tumble Chinese sailors, a Venezuelan doctor working himself to death in Chinguetti, indifferent French pensioners RVing along the coast, and a close-knit circle of Nigerien women who adopt her into their fold, showing her the promise of Africa’s future.

Genres: Travel, Africa, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Niger, Mauritania

256 pages, Hardcover

First published July 9, 2013

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having been an adventurous foreign journalist, Sovich's new married life in Paris, with a monotonous job, conformist culture, and daily luxury, produces in her that kind of middle class depression and ennui only an extended trip to Africa could fix. This is her part autobiography, part travelogue, mostly self-indulgent writings on her experiences, which include some real moments of introspection but also a great deal of stupidity and outright ridiculousness. Frankly, at times she got on my nerves; at the same time there's a hefty dose of myself I see in her. I understand her longing for travel as an escape, that sense of something out there that is missing from everyday life, something to fix things or make you a better person. Or just an indefinable something. Not only that, I could hardly be unaware of my cry of self-indulgence could equally be applied to myself: what a privilege it is to travel because you are bored....

Interesting at times but unremarkable overall, it is, at least, less of a wannabe self help book than some of the books masquerading in this genre thanks to Eat, Pray, Love.

>>Reading this as part of my 2018 #YeartoClear in which I aim to get to all those books hanging around on my Kindle.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had very mixed feelings about this travelogue. At times it was very engaging and interesting to hear about Sovich's trek through the western part of Africa. Her encounters with locals are eye-opening, appealing accounts of an oft-ignored area and the detailed information about the different countries kept me listening. It's with Sovich's personal journey with which I take issue. Poor, poor Sovich lives in Paris with her patient husband and just can't endure it. I know that people seek out different places to make a home, but Sovich's detailing of her misery in France put me off. She passingly acknowledges her privilege and treats Africa as almost this cure-all, mystical place for people like her. It feels so very self-involved despite the fact that it's brimming with life.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading about her travels, all the different cultures and her journey both internal and outward. I do think her writing strength is when she is describes the people she meets of the dialogue between herself and others. I did find the journey itself a bit self indulgent, not to the extent of Eat, Pray, Love which I am sure this book is being compared to. I like that she went to places one generally does not get to learn about and I have to give her credit because I do not believe anyone could get me to eat a sheep's eye sandwich.

[Carmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mother would be standing there like a slightly inebriated traffic cop directing the way. She encouraged me to go. She laid the path. Go now, she whispered to me at night in my dreams. See the world, see it all, then see it again.The overriding lesson of my childhood was that travel was the only thing that could ever make a woman happy.

[Alaa Bit Hashim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot remember why exactly I ordered this book and added it to my reading list, but I am sure it has something to do with “Timbuktu”. I have always been fascinated with this dreamy African city, whose history and culture is just as deep, rich and heavy as the weight of its name on our tongues. I loved it for its mouth- filling name; I even once said I would call my own daughter Timbuktu.
It is only when the author Nina Sovich started describing her own obsession with Timbuktu, that I started to realize that there might be more in common between myself and her. Henceforth, I related to her in some odd and various things.
In the first pages of “To the Moon and Timbuktu”, it gave me the impression that it is just another self-indulgent Eat, Pray, Love, book about a White Woman going on a soul journey in Africa, but I was wrong; Nina Sovich memoir on solitary woman travel was different.
This book is about Nina’s journey both inwards and outward, she was brutally honest in describing her own inner demons, and how her soul cannot find peace in the comfortable and domesticated Parisian life, with her French husband.
Yet, when she describes her journey through the Sahara of West Africa, giving an eye opening, appealing and detailed account of an area that is often ignored, you can’t help but keep reading.
Her travels enchanted me, how she speaks of the coastal wind and cliffs of Western Sahara. About the male adoration of the obese female form and the continued presence of slavery and the abundance of ancient Islamic texts that families pass on from generation to generation, in Mauritania. The market in Bamako, Mali, and the traditional Malian dresses. And finally how she poetically describes the beauty of the River Niger and the sense of peace when listening to women or children gently reciting verses from the Quran.
The book is a combination of travelogue, memoir, and psychological analysis. It is not only about her adventurous and hazardous travels through West Africa, but it is also and mainly about women’s need to make it on their own, to find their own strength and learn the hard way how to make tough decisions and stand by those decisions.
Niva Sovich writes beautifully and accurately. You can almost feel the heat of the Malian summer sun, smell the scent of the African rains and taste the morning herbal Mauritanian tea. All through the time I am reading her book, all I can think and dream about is traveling through Africa.

[☺Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of ennui after deciding that her former exciting life as a nomadic journalist (which had been full of travel and adventure) has been exchanged for one that is a dull, boring, and stressful 9-to-5 rut spent amongst the bourgeois of Paris, writer Nina Sovich decides to shake things up by traveling through Western Africa for some serious solitude and introspection. Feeling stagnant and suffocated living in Paris with a kind, supportive, and tolerant husband, daunted by the prospect of becoming a mother, inspired by pioneering female explorers of Africa Mary Kingsley and Karen Blixen, Ms. Sovich travels to remote destinations in Africa, including the mysterious and almost mystical Timbuktu. I enjoyed the descriptions of the places she visited and the people she met along the way during her somewhat self indulgent journey of self discovery.

[Hulananni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading about Africa, travel, women, non-fiction. Seemed my most enjoyable genre. Not sure if this measures up to what I expected. Author is ambivalent over so many different things. A bit foolhardy (IMHO) traveling to remote parts of the African continent alone while pregnant. She was following the 'path' of some early female travelers, e.g. Mary Kingsley. There is a bibliography which feeds my need for where to read more of those earlier 'pioneer' women in Africa.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a travel memoir of an educated, intelligent American mid 30's female journalist, who is married to a Frenchman with whom she lives in a Parisian apartment. It is a Paris that she describes as being constantly rainy and always grey. She hates her job which does sound a nightmare and she is unsettled in her marriage, about the future possibility of motherhood and in where she lives. She seems to dislike the French for no other reason it seems than they are so Gallic and French.

To address all this unhappiness and uncertainty she seeks to regain a sense of her own self and the adventurous life she had before marriage through off piste travel in Saharan Africa. As one might expect from a journalist, she writes well but very soon, her personality began to grate on me by saying one thing as a lofty aim but then doing the opposite. As an example, she states early on that she wants to seek out and enjoy the company of African Muslim women but then spends most of her time in Mauritania with a Venezuelan male doctor. She initially found Mauritania breathtaking but quickly seemed to tire of its people particularly the simple lives of the women.

She seemed much happier in Mali, though she is eventually disappointed by Timbuktu but then after returning home to Paris and deciding to have a baby she abruptly decides she must return to Africa when 4 months pregnant. In Niger she finds the heat overpowering mostly due to her condition and thus spends much of her time with a group of affluent women who have the luxury of effective air conditioning. She eventually tears herself away from these women after a bizarre beauty exhibition and so at the end of her Nigerien trip she talks of visiting the Great Mosque of Zinder but then completely glosses over three weeks of what she describes as unforgettable adventure.

Some of what she describes of her travels is fascinating. The coastal wind and cliffs of Western Sahara. In Mauritania, the male adoration of the obese female form, the continued presence of slavery and the abundance of ancient Islamic texts that families pass on from generation to generation. The market in Bamako, Mali, though this is somewhat spoilt by her musing on why people have children and then when getting measured for some traditional Malian dresses. Also describing the beauty of the River Niger when out in the countryside and the sense of peace when listening to women in Niger gently singing verses from the Koran.

So as you can see, there were plenty of things to keep me reading, but the overarching impression I was left with was not of the people and the beauty and the harsh nature of life in Saharan Africa but rather of a selfish and self indulgent, affluent western woman who moans too much about her lot in life, a life that countless millions might envy not only in the poverty stricken countries she was travelling through but all around the world.

[Anne Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this travel memoir so much - the author, Nina Sovich, describes the people and places of Africa not often written about (or traveled to) like the Western Sahara, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger, and she does so brilliantly. On every page you are suddenly transported to the small Sahara towns, to ghostly Mauritanian cities, and many a town or village darkened by poverty, in more than just a visual sense. Her writing allows the reader to actually feel the places she visits and understand them, in under-the-skin sort of ways. You don't just see a sand dune, you can feel the hot breeze and the golden glow of the moon and the loneliness or peace the author felt in that moment; or feel the terror seize you up in potentially dangerous situations; or the way the humidity and dust makes the air heavy and difficult to breathe. She doesn't just describe the sites of cities in the present day, but explores the politics, history, and problems wherever she goes as well, incorporating writings from famous travelers who wrote about their journeys through Africa in a different era. Most notable of all (at least for Nina Sovich) is Mary Kingsley.

Many reviewers on here complain about how she is privileged and how she is taking the wonderful things she has for granted by briefly leaving her kind husband and comfortable but stressful Parisian life, but her writing about these personal affairs is just another reason why I love her book so much. She is so absolutely, brutally honest about her inner demons and nagging worries, and the things that she knows shouldn't bother her (i.e. "comfortable" Parisian married life) but which she still can't shake off. All of her fears and worries are laid out on the table for all to see, and it makes her that much more endearing. Her quest to find balance in life (the balance between security/domesticity and free spiritedness) is one which I can absolutely connect to, as I think most people could. Life is a string of experiences and adventures, and above all, a balancing act, and her travel memoir demonstrates this so well and explains it with such a unique story.

[Liralen · Rating 3 out of 5]

What do you do when your life seems unfulfilling and staid, and wanderlust inhabits your core?

If you are Nina Sovich, you plan a cross-Africa trip in an effort to drive your restlessness out and let you settle down in grey Paris.

As she tells it, Sovich picked Timbuktu as her ultimate destination because it seemed tangible -- a place she had heard of -- but was far off the beaten path. I'm not sure she is ever really sure what she's looking for: some kind of closure, or a next step, or something undefinable.

I also am guilty of romanticizing Timbuktu, I suppose. I came to Timbuktu for the name, and not I too am burdening the town. I am bringing my baggage to this sunbaked end-of-the-road town and asking it to provide beauty and meaning. I am asking it to be something it is not. (page 218)

I remember thinking in Paris that I would pour Africa into me like some kind of magic elixir. Then I would be seen. Then I would exist. I seem now like a naive woman who thought a place or even beauty could make her whole. (page 220)

Whatever it is, her first attempt is a quasi-failure, perhaps due to lack of planning or unrelenting dissatisfaction -- an I haven't found it yet -- or that romanticism clashing with reality. She tries again, and though the second try goes better, she -- perhaps predictably -- cannot simply return home and be happy.

"Maybe I just miss Africa," I say.
"Maybe," he says, looking at me steadily. "Though it is possible you are confusing two different issues." (page 246)

By the end of the book, Sovich seems -- if not happy with her lot, entirely -- more grounded, more content to move forward and accept her wanderlust as a part of her that may not ever entirely be satisfied. She is neither broken nor triumphant, but she has grown and, more or less, come out ahead.

[Kenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this quite exasperating in places. Sovich is a perceptive and talented writer, with an excellent ear for relaying conversations. However, this book is as much her own journey of self discovery as travel writing, and frankly I was far less interested in her internal monologues than her descriptions of interesting pieces of West Africa.

So while every few chapters would paint an evocative picture of some flyblown town in West Africa, the locals and international expats that washed up, you would have a chunk of poor little rich girl whining about how tough her life in Paris/US/actually - gasp - having to have a job could be. Some lengthy passages about her husband (who seems to send the cheques without passing comment...) were frankly tedious. I just didn't care about home life in Paris - I (perhaps mistakenly) bought this to hear about Timbuktu, Mali and Niger.

But when she gets going, there are some excellent pieces - arriving in Mali, or staying in Niamey in Niger are very good, with the cast of locals brought convincingly to life. She uses her access as a women very well to get behind many of the local customs, particularly in Niger. But then I nearly threw it at the wall when she got to Timbuktu, and decided something along the lines of 'like me, Timbuktu didn't need to be burdened by its history" so I'm not to describe any of the historical bits beyond the bus station. I actually swore.

A shame - a good book in here (in some externally focused chapters the writing was much higher quality. But to much 'me' and not enough 'them'. In the "would you have a pint wiht them?" travel writer question, probably not - although if she brought her husband (and so talked to him instead of about him) she'd have some great anecdotes.

Approach with caution.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminded me of Andrew Boland's book Dhaka to Dakar, which I read last month. Both authors seemed to rush from town to town in Western Africa. They would stay a night or two, then move on. Staying only in one place long enough to procure the transportation for the next town. Nina Sovich is lucky she married a husband that didn't mind her traveling in Africa for months at a time. This book is well written, and she does give some interesting descriptions of the countries she traveled through, but I wish she had written more about Africa and less about her soul searching.

[Laurie Ferrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Story of Nina Sovich
This could have been a good book. If the author had focused more on the places she went and the people she met rather than herself. I have traveled Africa quite extensively and it is a beautiful continent with very interesting people. It was tiring to keep seeing the word "I". She seemed discontent and sometimes miserable - never truly amazed with the experience or the adventure.

[Leslie Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm planning a months-long trip to Africa in two years, and reading everything I can about the continent in the meantime. During my research for travelogues, I ran across this book. I loved it, and finished it in one day! Sovich gives an under-the-skin account of Africa and her time there. And despite the fact that she was dirty and uncomfortable half the time, she made me want to follow in her footsteps to see for myself what makes Africa so enticing.

[Zoë · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to meet this woman, I think she probably has a good heart and soul. But the person I recognize from her memoir is a bourgeois American Parisian insinuating herself briefly into African culture for her own self-centered needs. It saddens me to see travel and adventure expressed in her limited terms.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. At first I was actually going to put it down because I thought it was going to be another self-serving Eat, Pray, Love or Wild kind of book, but it really wasn't. The author writes well and does a great job of describing her love of West Africa and what makes it so special.

[Harry · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only word I can think of to properly describe this book is "self-important". The broad brushstrokes of the book—the broadest description, I suppose, which we find in its blurb, its cover, and every other means by which to judge the book except actually reading it—sound quite interesting. A trek through the heart of Africa. The "heart of Africa", however, is not what Sovich seems to be concerned with, in this strangely autobiographical, unselfconsciously introspective teen novel of a travelogue.

To the Moon and Timbuktu reads like it was written by someone who has read good travelogues, and understands what's meant to be in them. It hits those points carefully and formulaically: there is the Goal—Chatwin's "piece of brontosaurus"; Lattimore's festival of the Khan. There are unusual, memorable Characters (with, yes, a capital C for "crafted"). There is a beginning, middle and an end. There are the moments of despair, there is a Lesson that is Learned. But somehow, despite aping the contours of powerful travel writing, Sovich never quite manages to produce it herself.

The problem is that while most great travel writing uses the self as a vehicle for presenting the other—Chatwin only exists in his stories as a lens through which we encounter Patagonia and the Outback; even Bill Bryson is oddly absent from his own pages—Sovich presents us with West Africa as a prism through which she examines herself. Doubtless this was of great benefit to Ms. Sovich when she was finding herself, but it's not terribly interesting reading. Sovich is an extraordinarily privileged, well-educated, wealthy white woman with an easy life, loving—and immensely patient—husband and strong social circle. She has the means and the lack of responsibilities necessary to jaunt around Africa on a whim. I don't note any of this to hold it against her, but to underscore the following point: reading about her tribulations "understanding herself" is, therefore, deeply uninteresting. She's not sure if she wants kids? I don't care.

The way that Sovich collapses all of West Africa into a narrative lens on her own mid-life crisis is boring, certainly, but also troubling. Despite all of her overwrought professions of love for the continent and its people, those people constantly recede into the background. There is little or no meaningful engagement with the reality of Africa for Africans, or the opinions and feelings of Africans. There is just a lot of sighing and complaining about how hard it is being a rich girl who lives in the United States, or Paris, or can jet off to Cairo or Israel seemingly on a whim. All this is bound back to a similarly uninteresting story about Sovich's Swedish mother who—similarly unconscious of the ease of her life—was deeply unhappy being wealthy and secure in Connecticut and so wandered the world. Sovich's husband, who largely appears to send checks to fund Sovich's travel without passing comment, is reduced (much like all the book's Africans) to a prism through which Sovich can present herself. In this case, life in Paris (with Florent) is "rainy and grey but solid and dependable". This, I suppose, is meant to justify Sovich's absurd behaviour, nauseatingly self-important and solipsistic attitudes, and ridiculous Eat Pray Love quest.

I picked this up hoping for what it purports to be: a memoir of travel in early-twenty-first-century West Africa. What I got, instead, was an overwrought, indulgent, unselfconscious teen drama with a thirty-four-year-old central character I could not care less about.

[Laney · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have, never in my life, DNFed a book faster than I DNFed this.

It’s hard to give such a biographical book a low star rating based on content. It feels, in a way, like you’re rating the person who wrote the book negatively. It’s tempting to judge biographies or biographical details purely on their writing style and quality, and usually I do. Though in this case, I find myself having to make an exception.

Because honestly, Nina’s writing is impeccable, as I expected it to be.

What I didn’t expect was everything else.

Never in my life have I read a book about someone who has it so good but is so blatantly consumed with herself as the author of this book.

If I’m ever incredibly well off, happily married to an amazing man who tolerates the things this woman does, and live together with him in an apartment in Paris while we talk about starting a family, I don’t think I would use the phrase “where life is sad and grey but solid and predictable” to describe my daily life in the French capital.

And if I ever do have that life and describe it in that way, you are all welcome to DNF my book and tell me how moronic and selfish I sound.

It’s not the fact that she’s unhappy with a seemingly perfect situation that makes this book intolerable for me. Just because you have a good life doesn’t always mean you’ll be happy, and that’s understandable. What bothers me is how incredibly unaware she is as a person of not only how good she has it but also how she goes about fixing this.

And to be fair to Nina, she comes by what’s seemingly a case of spoiled rich kid discontent honestly. In the flashbacks to her younger life (because what travel memoir isn’t complete without unnecessary flashbacks to contextualize a trip that was easily understandable without filler about how the author’s experience is unique) she mentions her Swedish born mother being similarly discontent with the picture perfect life of a rich American family and being similarly unaware of how good she had it. Her mother complains about small details of suburban America that no one is forcing her to expose herself to and without any real context of the positives or awareness for how easy her life is.

I can’t say I got very far into this book to tell anyone how Nina’s story unfolds, because I put the book down pretty quickly when I started to get the vibe that she was using female explorers of Africa as an excuse to travel there. I was left with a distinct impression that her intent was actually poverty tourism, and that just traveling through these countries and areas of Africa would make her feel like she’d somehow experienced struggle in her easy-peasy life.

I could be wrong about that vibe, but I don’t think I am. And I won’t be picking this one up again to find out because whether that’s the reason she went or not, she seems incredibly self-absorbed.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

I REALLY loved this book! So much that I finished it and immediately started reading it again. I travel in my books, because I cannot do this in real life and this book provided me many hours of travel through a part of the world I haven't yet experienced much (in books). I loved hearing about the landscapes, people, and culture. I was able to learn a bit through reading this and that is always a bonus. Of course I always do my research to make sure what I'm learning is accurate, but she provided me with the nugget to want to dig deeper into different cultures, traditions, and place. If she wrote 100 more books similar to this but in different places, I would read them all.

I never got the vibes anyone else mentions here about her being self-indulgent. Isn't everyone a little of that most of the time? If anything, I'm jealous that her self indulgence has her traveling the world, while mine just involves finding time to read a book. People mention things about her being unsafe,


(spoilers)

traveling while pregnant, etc, but I think she demonstrated having great awareness throughout the book while traveling.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

A couple other reviews are pretty spot-on for my take as well.

At times this book is alive. Mostly in Sovich's conversations with people.

The rest of it... ugg. It's off-putting. I didn't even get a sense of the hardships her trips would have been; there had to be true physical danger as well as infuriating bureaucracy, and yet, that hardly came through. It was like she glossed over the 'action' – and even barely gave descriptions of these countries few westerners will ever visit – to wax on and on about her own woe-is-me boredom with married life and a 9-to-5 job. She seems utterly tone-deaf to her own privilege.

I found myself more interested in Mary Kingsley, who Sovich mentions often. So, I'll have to look her up.

I almost stopped near the end when she got pregnant – which she did because it’s what women are expected to do – but the final chapters about Niger were some of the most interesting. Were they worth going through the rest of the book? Probably not.

[Val · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author travelled to several countries in Francophone West Africa in 2007, sometimes spending quite long periods in one place. My daughter and I also travelled in many of the same countries in the same year (we avoided Western Sahara) using public transport. I thought that this book would contain many reminders, but the account is patchy: she has almost nothing to say about the month she spent in Senegal or the journey from Nouakchott to Bamako, the chapter headed 'Dogon Country' contains a brief glimpse of the escarpment from a car and many places she did stop at, including Timbuktu or Tombouctou itself, get little more than a cursory description. She spoke to various people she met, but did not go out of her way to talk to very many of them. This was disappointing.
She does talk a lot about her childhood, her marriage and her inability to make boeuf bourguignon or breadcrumbs. This was of no interest to me.
The most intriguing question was why there is a giraffe skin on the cover. It is not answered.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

My experience of this book was waxing and waning, just like Nina's experience of Africa. In the beginning of the book, I really couldn't stand Nina, and her reasons for being unhappy with her life. They were lame reasons. Boredom, childish preconceptions of motherhood and children, more boredom, hating life in Paris and her job, boredom again. However, as she traveled and described her experiences, I warmed up to the way she was candid about her private thoughts and fears, and how they shaped her travel. I was looking for a greater purpose in this book, and found none, just a great adventure. Sometimes silly, sometimes dangerous, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly, but full of stories to tell. Just about the place where she tried to brush coconut butter through her hair, I decided to like Nina and her book.

[Shar · Rating 4 out of 5]

We all dream of escaping our daily lives...

Too many hours at work, appointments and commitments have a way of suffocating us and dreaming of escape. Nina had the guts to do it. She takes us on an honest escape to Africa, not the travel guide kind but the backpacking, hostel type of travel . She experiences the culture and its people without pressing her beliefs on to them and in turn really allowing us to immerse ourselves into the experience.

[Lorilei Beer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one thing or the other -- this memoir reads like a confessional that happens largely in the desert landscapes of West Africa. The author grapples with her life choices, needing to test her ability to be strong in the face of a concocted adversity that is the everyday lives of the people in Niger, Mali and Senegal. We don't really get to know any of the people she is enamored of -- just as she does not.

[Josh Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one had been sitting around on my kindle for an age, so long in fact I couldn’t even remember why I first wanted to read it, or even what it was about.

Quite quickly I was thankful to previous me. The authors honesty when discussing her struggles was the highlight for me. The experiences while travelling were also entertaining, some areas better than others. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed, Karen’s not going to be happy with my suggestion of Western Sahara for a holiday

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-written book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I cannot believe I waited for so long to read it. It has...raw feelings and raw West Africa before parts of it were overtaken by conflict. Such a beautiful writing. Such a beautiful journey to herself. It resonated with me, and I want to read more from this truly gifted writer.

[Christie Parkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the descriptions of her travels and experiences. I could really identify with this after my recent trip to Morocco and reading this made me want to follow her footsteps as well as read more about Africa.

[J.A. Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sovich does a great job describing not only her physical journey, but her emotional one. If you want to put yourself on a non-fiction journey of discovery through the Western Sahara, this book will make you feel that world and her drive behind why she needed to experience it.

[MsSwisis · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘It’s okay to think of yourself one way, fight hard to get back to yourself, and then wake up in that place feeling lost. It’s okay to go away looking for a grand purpose and come back with fragments that don’t add up.’

[Cheryl Schibley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very fun book about an American woman living in Paris with her French husband but has a thing for African travel. She travels alone in Africa on different trips in her goal of reaching Timbuktu. Very humorous and insightful.