Burton: Snow Upon the Desert - Tapa dura

A centennial biography which draws on new material from untapped manuscript sources in order to clarify events in Richard Burton's life hitherto hardly dealt with. The author offers a challenging and original psychological portrait of this poet, scholar, soldier, archaeologist and explorer. Richard Burton discovered Lake Tanganyika and took part in the notorious search for the source of the Nile. He risked death visiting the sacred place of Mecca, disguised as a Muslim, and again penetrating the forbidden city of Harar. He travelled extensively in North and South America, India, Europe and the Middle East. A talented translator, he produced English versions of Camoens's "Lusiads", the "Kama Sutra" and, most famously, "The Arabian Nights". However, if the public man had to his credit so many resounding achievements, the private man was tortured, divided, and deeply ambivalent. Politically reactionary and a hater of women, blacks, sociologists, egalitarians, Jews and the Irish, Burton was a mass of contradictions. Frank McLynn is a biographer and historian and has also published "Charles Edward Stuart: A Tragedy in Many Acts" and "Stanley: The Making of an African Explorer".