Trickster Travels

Captured by Christian pirates in the Mediterranean and imprisoned by the pope, then released, baptized, and allowed a European life of scholarship as the Christian writer Giovanni Leone, Al-Hasan al-Wazzan - or Leo Africanus - is a celebrated but hitherto elusive figure. Here, in Trickster Travels, distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial, and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him, and a superb interpretation of his extraordinary life and work.