Describes how a group of Timbuktu librarians enacted a daring plan to smuggle the city's great collection of rare Islamic manuscripts away from the threat of destruction at the hands of Al Qaeda militants to the safety of southern Mali.
A tale told in two historical periods follows da Vinci's ambitious 1492 creation of Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine and a conservator's life-risking effort to save the painting from Nazi destruction centuries later.