Six favourite books: Sahara Desert

Read time 4 mins

A genre-hopping selection of books to plunge you into the heart of the Sahara Desert

Saharan Journey

Sven Lindqvist

Saharan Journey brings two Saharan travelogues – Exterminate All the Brutes and Desert Divers – together in one book. Lindqvist’s fragmentary style (similar in presentation to Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia) is captivating and un-categorisable. Saharan Journey takes us on a physical and intellectual journey through Algeria and Morocco into ‘the heart of the darkness’ of the European mind and its attitude towards the stony, baked expanse of the Sahara Desert.

The Friend of the Desert

Pablo d’Ors

A slim but powerful novel that can be read in an afternoon (my favourite kind of book).The Friend of the Desert chronicles a man called Pavel’s forays into the desert, first as part of an enigmatic organisation called 'Friends of the Desert’ and later on his own. Pavel explores the shifting sands, the silence, and ultimately, something approaching infinity.

The Fearful Void

Geoffrey Moorhouse

Many adventure stories combine travelogue and self–realisation, but this book ploughs deeper than most. The Fearful Void charts Geoffrey Moorhouse’s attempt to cross the Sahara on foot from the Atlantic to the Nile – a distance of 3,600 miles. The results of his (mis)adventures examine the roots of his fear as he moves further into the 'awful emptiness' and comes to terms with the spiritual as well as the physical dangers of the desert.

South from Barbary

Justin Marozzi

South from Barbary – as nineteenth-century Europeans knew North Africa – is the story of Marozzi’s 1,500–mile journey by camel across Libya. South from Barbary mixes travelogue with the fascinating history of Saharan exploration and efforts by early British explorers to suppress the African slave trade. I love how the writing evokes the poetry and solitude of the desert, the companionship of man and beast, and the humour and resiliency of the Tuareg and Tubbu people.

The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint–Exupéry

“What makes the desert beautiful, is that somewhere it hides a well”, says the little prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s philosophical story set in the Sahara Desert.

The Little Prince was written in the last years of Saint–Exupéry’s life and was inspired by his time in Libya and Morocco. The book is now one of the most loved children’s books.

The Sheltering Sky

Paul Bowles

The Sheltering Sky is the book that started my fascination with the Sahara Desert. Bowles’s cool, detached prose chronicles the frailties of three American travellers as they touch the unfathomable emptiness of the North African desert. The novel was described by Bowles as “an adventure story in which the adventures take place on two planes simultaneously: in the actual desert, and in the inner desert of the spirit”. However you enjoy it, this book is a pleasure.

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