In Search of Ancient North Africa

For forty years, Barnaby Rogerson has travelled across North Africa, making sense of the region's complex and fascinating history as both a writer and a guide. Throughout that time there have always been a handful of stories he could not pin into neat, tidy narratives; stories that were not distinctly good or bad, tragic or pathetic, selfish or heroic, malicious or noble. This book, neither a work of history nor travel writing, is a journey into the ruins of a landscape in an attempt to make sense of those stories through the lives of six historical figures, five men and one woman: A sacrificial refugee (Queen Dido); a prisoner of war who became a compliant tool of the Roman Empire (King Juba II); an unpromising provincial who, as Emperor, brought the Roman Empire to its dazzling apogee (Septimius Severus); an intellectual careerist who became a bishop and a saint (St Augustine); the greatest general the world has ever known (Hannibal); and the Berber Cavalry General who...