The Golden Rhinoceros

Fauvelle has assembled some powerful fragments of Africa's history from the 8th to the 15th centuries. --Times Higher Education Featuring stories from around the continent, this is a useful corrective to the outdated idea of a land 'without history'. --History Revealed Magazine The Golden Rhinoceros brings the diplomacy of Africa's 'Middle Ages' to life, while also illuminating such fields as commerce, warfare, faith and literary endeavour. . . . Fauvelle's three dozen or so snapshots serve as a kind of historical pointillism, each tiny moment contributing to a panorama of an intricately connected Afro-Islamic world, spanning a period of some seven hundred years. ---Barnaby Crowcroft, Literary Review The 2018 Medieval Book of the Year Praise for the French edition: A remarkable book. --Patrick Boucheron, Coll ge de France Is Africa a continent without history? Fran ois-Xavier Fauvelle magnificently refutes this recurring suspicion. --Julie Clarini, Le Monde Fascinating, easy to read, told with verve. --Isabelle R f, Le Temps This book is an event. --Christian Nadeau, Universit de Montr al Fauvelle is one of France's most interesting, influential, and intellectually vital historians of Africa. His elegantly written book is very learned, yet wears its learning lightly. The Golden Rhinoceros is a pleasure to read. --Toby Green, author of The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589 Fauvelle is a wonderful storyteller--his sophisticated narrative is intriguing, entertaining, and informative. No other book presents medieval Africa in this way. --G rard Chouin, College of William & Mary Fauvelle offers a brilliant riposte to how little we know about precolonial Africa: approach it from the perspective of global history. African history has never felt more alive. If I were a historian of Africa, this is the book that I would like to have written. --Timothy Brook, author of Vermeer's Hat and Mr. Selden's Map of China