The Anglo-Ethiopian Society
Book Club - ONLINE - Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa
Charles Nicholl
Tuesday 15th August 2023
Online event starting at 19:00 BST - Public event (all welcome to join).
Note - Register for the event on Eventbrite and you'll be emailed a Zoom link shortly before the event.
For this book club we're going to discuss Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa, 1880-91 by Charles Nicholl.
Arthur Rimbaud, poetic genius, having conquered the literary world of Paris, abandoned France in 1880 and disembarked in Aden, on the coast of Yemen, a lean twenty-five-year-old Frenchman carrying only a brown suitcase fastened with four leather straps and a touch of fever. The subsequent period, ‘the lost years’, is the subject of this biographical quest.
Charles Nicholl pieces together the shadowy story of Rimbaud’s life as a trader, explorer and gun-runner. We catch his trail in Somalia, in the alleys of Djibouti, up in the highlands of Ethiopia, in the souks of Cairo with twenty pounds of gold strapped around his waist and escorting a camel-train of Remington rifles across the Danakil desert.
Charles Nicholl is an English author specializing in works of history, biography, literary detection, and travel. The subjects of his books have included Christopher Marlowe, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Nashe and William Shakespeare as well as Arthur Rimbaud. Nicholl was educated at King's College, Cambridge and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Book a place using Eventbrite in order to be sent a link to the session. More registration details are on the Eventbrite page.
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Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa, 1880-91 by Charles Nicholl Publisher : Eland, 2021 ISBN : 9781780601694 (paperback) UK RRP £14.99 Originally published in 1997 by Random House, there are lots of second hand copies available. |