Selim Aga

"The forgotten exploits of an African slave who rose to become an admired figure in Victorian exploration and whose adventures have all the ingredients of a Holywood blockbuster."
The Voice

Selim Aga was eight years old when he was abducted from the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and sold into slavery and auctioned 2000 miles away in Egypt to the highest bidder. Born around 1827 Selim was killed in a war in Liberia in 1875. How then did this slave come to be lecturing to fashionable audiences in London and publishing in the "Geographical Magazine"? James McCarthy has pieced together the life of this remarkable man using Selim's own narrative and those of others such as Sir Richard Burton.