On the Road to Timbuktu: Explorers in Africa

The book Vers Tombouctou : L'Afrique des explorateurs II, on which the film is based, is an illustrated monograph on history of the European exploration of Timbuktu, inner and western Africa, published in pocket format by Éditions Gallimard on 14 September 1994. Written by the French Africanist and historian Anne Hugon, this work is the 216th volume in the encyclopaedic collection "Découvertes Gallimard", and part of the collection's Histoire series (formerly belonging to Invention du monde series).[9] It's also a sequel of The Exploration of Africa: From Cairo to the Cape ("Découvertes" [№ 117]). Together, they form a "miniseries"—L'Afrique des explorateurs—in the collection.[10]

According to the tradition of "Découvertes", which is based on an abundant pictorial documentation and a way of bringing together visual documents and texts, enhanced by printing on coated paper; in other words, "genuine monographs, published like art books".[11]

While many of the French titles from the collection make it into English, this book has never been translated.

The book concentrates on Timbuktu, an ancient city in Mali, in West Africa, a region which the preceding work From Cairo to the Cape has nothing on it.

For Europeans, Timbuktu was a mythical city in the heart of the Sahara. In 1795, Mungo Park acknowledged the Niger River. Thirty years later, René Caillié entered this "forbidden city", while Hugh Clapperton explored Lake Chad, Heinrich Barth crossed the Sahara... Travellers discovered the powerful dynasties of West Africa. Since 1850, the new explorers were mostly colonial officers with mission of conquest. On the eve of the World War I, despite African nationalism, Europeans managed to create genuine empires in Africa.