Tripoli: Portrait of a City

by Philip Ward

“Tripoli is a place to be lived it can only be appreciated to the full after long and detailed explorations. The visitor who walks quickly, purposefully, down Shar’a 24 December completely misses the piquant contrasts between the shady Islamic School of Arts and Crafts, of the Turkish period, tiny Italian shops selling groceries and fruit, a Libyan Bookshop, an Indian merchant, a vast American oil company offices. Nothing it appears rather that an imaginative internationalism has found a home to proclaim itself.”

Wrote Philip Ward, an oil company librarian six years in Libya. This was the first detailed guide in any language to the city of Tripoli. Here is a poet’s evocation of the sights and sounds, the pleasures and surprises of the capital of Libya, where the leading foreign language is English and the currency was sterling. The book is illustrated with engravings, with old and modern photographs to show Tripoli as it was. He gives a snapshot of the city as it was in late 1960s, and what a beautiful picture it is.

Part of the Oleander Classics series , this 1969 title has been reproduced using the highest-quality modern scanning technology. This is in order to keep important works from the Press’s 50-year history from going out of print. In this way, the invaluable resources provided by this and other books in the series remain available for general readers, academics and other interested parties.

Genres: Libya

92 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2013

About the author

Philip Ward was a chartered librarian who was appointed as Director of the Unesco/Government of Indonesia Project for the Development of the National Library Service, Jakarta. He is the author of more than fifty books. A poet, dramatist, and reviewer for World Literature Today, Ward has a large working private library and in 1956 was founding Honorary Secretary of the Private Libraries Association. He has lived in Libya (for 8 1/2 years), Malta, England, and Egypt, as well as Indonesia.