**New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice** To save ancient Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean's Eleven in this "fast-paced narrative that is...part intellectual history, part geopolitical tract, and...
The story starts in '80s-era Timbuktu, when bookseller, historian, and librarian Abdel Kader Haidara received an order to search for and rescue tens of thousands of lost ancient manuscripts. He is derailed from this formidable task when, in 2012, thousands of Al Qaeda militants...