In the New Yorker this July, Jon Lee Anderson wrote a fascinating article about Timbuktu, where Al Qaeda is working to become a legitimate political power. A scary story. But a beautifully written one. Take this paragraph when he introduces readers to the city in question:
Timbuktu is a small, unlovely city in shades of brown and gray, a warren of low, flat-roofed homes made of mud or concrete. Interspersed are beehive-shaped tents covered with hides and scrap–the hovels of the nomadic Bella, former slaves who remain in serf like conditions, working as goatherds and as servants for their former owners. Other than one paved street, the roads are dirt. At the outer edges, the city peters out amid sand dunes and piles of uncollected refuse. In Timbuktu, as in many parts of Africa, plastic rubbish is so prevalent as to seem part of a new ecology.
What I like about this paragraph is that it is so vividly descriptive without being too writerly, powerfully visual without being overwrought. Doesn’t make me want to visit Timbuktu. But almost makes me feel like I have.
(Click here to view comments)