Somebody Else

This is the story of Rimbaud`s `lost years' the years after he turned his back on poetry, and fame and France, for a life of wandering and obscurity in the wilds of East Africa. In this compelling biographical study, Charles Nicholl pieces together the shadowy story of Rimbaud`s life as a trader, explorer and gun-runner in Africa. We follow his trail across the Somali desert, through the backstreets of Djibouti, and into the highlands of Ethiopia. We glimpse him with his Abyssinian mistress in Aden; walking the souks of Cairo with twenty pounds od gold round his waist; crossing the Danakil desert with a camal-train of Remington rifles. The journey leads also into the strange psychological terrain of Rimbaud`s obsessive desire to escape, to disappear. For in Africa as Charles Nicholl shows in this fascinating book, Rimbaud seems to have lived out that mysterious pronouncement of his teenage years: Je est un autre'- I is someone else.