Jason Goodwin
Thrill of the Chase
Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean
By Adrian Tinniswood
Jonathan Cape 352pp £20 order from our bookshop
Adrian Tinniswood is a masterly writer of history with a gift for slamming his readers into the thick of the action, as he demonstrated in his fine book on the Great Fire of London, By Permission of Heaven. Now he has tackled a subject thick with smoke and bright with daggers: the Barbary pirates. It is satisfactory to report that Tinniswood’s pirates – living hugger-mugger in the dens of Algiers and Tunis, Muslim corsairs sharing the streets with renegade Englishmen and Dutch outlaws – were as terrifying and successful as their engrossing reputation suggests.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Sign up to our e-newsletter!
Get highlights from the new issue and selected archive articles, as well as exclusive competitions and subscription offers delivered straight to your inbox.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/freenewsletter
'Some Labour MPs who were shocked by Corbyn’s rise behaved appallingly ... Not only were they disloyal; they also had no coherent strategy for removing Corbyn or an alternative left-of-centre project.'
@steverichards14 https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-accidental-leader
'As readers, we are immersed in Tambu’s self-alienation, at one and the same time reached out to and held at arm’s length.'
@ellekeboehmer weighs up Tsitsi Dangarembga's Booker-shortlisted novel, 'This Mournable Body'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-tambu-did-next