Travels with a Tangerine

A brilliant, erudite and entertaining literary coup - Time

Battutah couldn’t enjoy a better champion … This is a considerable book, mind-broadening, not only in the way that it revives the history of a remarkable traveller, but also for its representation of modern Islam as tolerant, hospitable, humorous and cultured - The Times

Sometimes, as [Mackintosh-Smith] travels from Cairo to the Crimea, across deserts, into assassins’ strongholds, it seems that Ibn Battutah is just a swish of a robe ahead - Independent

A fluent Arabist who has lived in Yemen for the best part of two decades, Mackintosh-Smith is an accomplished etymologist who delights in his field of research and shares Ibn Battutah’s roving intellectual curiosity, if not his boundless sexual appetite … Travels with a Tangerine has all the makings of a classic - The Spectator

Mackintosh-Smith is an intrepid and determined traveller, with an uncanny instinct for right turnings and the necessary conviction to pursue them … Mixing archaic language … with a twenty-first-century sensibility, fogeyism with an appetite for fun, food and a good smoke, he slips effortlessly between our world and that of the fourteenth century. In so doing, he has created a gripping and accomplished travel book - Sunday Times

With the Travels of IB (as he affectionately thinks of him) in hand, Mackintosh-Smith here follows his predecessor’s trail as far as the Crimea, seeking what remains of the sights Battutah saw, skilfully evoking those that have vanished, all the while remaining alert to the deep connections between modern Muslim society and the past. The result is an immensely engaging book - Daily Telegraph