Barbary Boredom
WHAT a pity that so promising a writer as Mr. Xan Fielding should have let his admirers down with his latest book. After all, the Corsairs and the Barbary Coast are no mean basis for a travel book, but what comes out is superficial, jerky and a little bad-tempered. And twenty-five shillings seems far too much.
Surely a standard for a travel book, even if it only sets out to entertain, is that it should contain at least a shred of an attempt to get underneath the skin of the people through whose lands the travellers are moving. In Corsair Country there is none of this; the inhabitants of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya are almost contempt- uously dismissed and you are left with an impres- sion of someone hastening along one of the most interesting coastlines in the world, preoccupied only with getting good food and bathing. Surely the French Riviera would have done as well.
Mr. Fielding's excuse for his book—the one that made this reviewer press on so optimistically with reading it to the bitter end—was an interest in the fabulous Corsairs whose sorties from the North African coast coloured Mediterranean history forsso many centuries. A good theme, you would have thought. But the history, which is popped in every now and then, is served up so dully by Mr. Fielding, who was so palpably bored, that one is forced to say that if pots have to be boiled the Barbary Coast is hardly the set- ting against which to perform the operation. The North African coast—and particularly the part of it covered by this book—is packed with interest, both topical and historical, but you have got to look for it. Mr. Fielding really didn't try.
ROGER FALK
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