Author(s): Justin Marozzi

History

Herodotus is known as the Father of History, but he was much more than that. He was also the world's first travel writer, a pioneering geographer, anthropologist, explorer, moralist, tireless investigative reporter and enlightened multiculturalist before the word existed. He was at once learned professor and tabloid journalist, with an unfailing eye for fabulous material to inform and amuse, to titillate, horrify and entertain. In his masterpiece the Histories, tall stories of dog-headed men, gold-digging ants and flying snakes jostle for space within a mesmerising narrative of the Persian Wars, from which Greece emerged triumphant in 5BC to give birth to Western civilisation. Using the effervescent and profoundly modern Herodotus as his guiding light, Justin Marozzi takes the reader back to his world with eclectic travels to Greece, Turkey, Egypt and war-torn Iraq. Review: 'The most brilliant of the new generation of travelwriter-historians' -- Sunday Telegraph 'Justin Marozzi is that most precious rarity: a serious traveller who is also a real writer, with a wonderful feel for language, a gift for narrative and an enviable sensitivity and lightness of touch. Brave, romantic, erudite and humane, South from Barbary is a genuinely remarkable debut' -- William Dalrymple 'The perfect travel book ...observant, shrewd, patient and exceedingly well attuned ... It is a measure of Marozzi's skill that he handles the big themes of history and the small irritations of third-millennium camel travel with equal charm and felicity' -- Financial Times 'Excellent...a superbly rounded and vivid portrait of one of history's most fascinating personalities' -- Andrew Roberts, Evening Standard 'Captivating, a delightful and fortunate conjunction between the world of [Tamerlane] then and that world transformed today' -- Spectator 'Herodotus may have lived 24 centuries ago but he is our 21st century contemporary and companion - the father not just of history but of comparative ethnography too, not only a brilliant storyteller and indefatigable traveller but also a shrewd and tolerant observer of human fads and foibles on the grandest global scale. Justin Marozzi, himself a veteran traveller and journalist and intrepid crosser of cultural frontiers, does his hero full justice in this scintillating, thought-provoking and entertaining hommage' -- Paul Cartledge, Cambridge University First published 2008.