A long time ago I read The Devil That Drives. It is an excellent biography, written by Fawn Brodie and first published in 1967. It covers comprehensively the life of Sir Richard Burton. Brodie creates a brilliantly vivid and captivating portrait of Burton. By way of her prose, he emerges vividly from the richly textured fabric of his time (i.e, the Victorian era and the age of Colonialism and Imperialism). His travels to Mecca and Medina dressed as a Muslim pilgrim, his witnessing of the human sacrifices at Dahomey and his unlikely but loving partnership with his pious Catholic bride are treated both with compassion and scholarly rigor. It is one of very few books that I’ve read again. I see it as something of a companion to Edward W. Saïd’s 1978 Orientalism.
Praise for The Devil That Drives
“A first class biography of an exceptional man … read it.”
— J.H. Plumb, New York Times
“The latest, far the best and surely the final biography of Sir Richard Burton, one of the most bizarre characters whom England has ever produced.”
— Graham Greene, The Observer
Sir Richard Burton, it has been said, was a true man of the Renaissance. He was soldier, explorer, ethnologist, archaeologist, poet, translator, and one of the two or three great linguists of his time. He was also an amateur physician, a botanist, a geologist, a swordsman, and a superb raconteur. Burton is also said to have been the first to translate The Arabian Nights.
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