No wonder, then, that travel to Africa takes on such mythical status in this book, idealized to the point of legend. Alï Mubärak never traveled to Africa, and so the two hundred or so pages devoted to the continent are a story of shipwreck and adventure, as told to the Egyptian characters by a young British sailor named James (Yaqüb), whom they encounter in Marseilles.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 273