{"product_id":"yemen","title":"Yemen","description":"Our ideas of the Arabian Peninusula have been hijacked: by images of the desert, by oil, by the Gulf War. But there is another Arabia. For the Classical geographers Yemen was a fabulous land where flying serpents guarded sacred incense groves. Medieval Arab visitors told of disappearing islands and menstruating mountains. Vita Sackville-West found Aden 'precisely the most repulsive corner of the world'. Arguably the most fascinating but least known country in the Arab world, Yemen has a way of attracting comment that ranges from the superficial to the wildly fictitious. In Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land, Tim Mackintosh-Smith writes with an intimacy and depth of knowledge gained through over twenty years among the Yemenis. He is a travelling companion of the best sort - erudite, witty and eccentric. Crossing mountain, desert, ocean and three millennia of history, he portrays hyrax hunters and dhow skippers, a noseless regicide, and a sword-wielding tyrant with a passion for Heinz Russian salad.\nYet even the ordinary Yemenis are extraordinary: their family tree goes back to Noah and is rooted in a land which, in the words of a contemporary poet, has become the dictionary of its people.  Every page of this book is dashed - like the land it describes - with the marvellous.","brand":"John Murray General Publishing Division","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40137794224213,"sku":"9780719597404N","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2481\/5790\/products\/f779a7fc-4a83-41c5-9cba-2d11047ee9dc.jpg?v=1656341444","url":"https:\/\/smeikalbooks.co.uk\/en-us\/products\/yemen","provider":"smeikalbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}