num_pages: 234
description: During the years he spent among the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq-long before they were almost completely wiped out by Saddam Hussein-Wilfred Thesiger came to understand, admire, and share a way of life that had endured for many centuries. Traveling from village to village by canoe, he won acceptance by dispensing medicine and treating the sick. In this account of a nearly lost civilization, he pays tribute to the hospitality, loyalty, courage, and endurance of the people, and describes their impressive reed houses, the waterways and lakes teeming with wildlife, the herding of buffalo and hunting of wild boar, moments of tragedy, and moments of pure comedy in vivid, engaging detail.
language: English
title: The Marsh Arabs
titlecomplete: The Marsh Arabs
characters: Wilfred Thesiger
genres: Islam, History, Classics, Anthropology, Adventure, Biography, Memoir, Travel, Cultural, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 1325
places: Middle East, Iraq
awards: awardedAt: -189360000000
name: W.H. Heinemann Award
publisher: Penguin Classics