Catalogue > Fiction
Desert
J.M.G Le Clézio
The international bestseller, by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2008, available for the first time in English translation.
Hailed by the Swedish Academy as Le Clézio’s ‘definitive breakthrough as a novelist’, Desert is an epic novel that spans the twentieth century and ranges across two continents, from the North African desert to the streets of Marseilles.
Young Nour is a North African desert tribesman. It is 1909, and as the First World War looms Nour’s tribe – the Blue Men – are forced from their lands by French colonial invaders. Spurred on by thirst, hunger, suffering, they seek guidance from a great spiritual leader. The holy man sends them even further from home, on an epic journey northward, in the hope of finding a land in which they can again be free.
Decades later, an orphaned descendant of the Blue Men – a girl called Lalla – is living in a shantytown on the coast of Morocco. Lalla has inherited both the pride and the resilience of her tribe – and she will need them, as she makes a bid to escape her forced marriage to a wealthy older man. She flees to Marseilles, where she experiences both the hardships of immigrant life – as a hotel maid – and the material prosperity of those who succeed – when she becomes a successful model. And yet Lalla does not betray the legacy of her ancestors.
In these two narratives set in counterpoint, Nobel Prize-winning novelist J. M. G. Le Clézio tells – powerfully and movingly – the story of the ‘last free men’ and of Europe’s colonial legacy – a story of war and exile and of the endurance of the human spirit.
‘A rich, sprawling, searching, poetic, provocative, broadly historic and demanding novel, which in all those ways displays the essence of Le Clezio. As a reflection on colonization and its legacy, it is painfully relevant after 30 years.' New York Times
‘In scenes of shimmering intensity, Le Clézio contrasts nature’s stark and majestic clarity, from scouring sand to the incinerating sun and the vast gleaming net of stars, with the chaos, toxicity, and injustice of human life. A long time coming for English-language readers, Le Clezio’s incandescent masterpiece couldn’t be more relevant.’ Booklist (starred review)
'A writer of something akin to genius' Sunday Telegraph
About the author
J. M. G. Le Clézio was born on 13 April 1940 in Nice and was educated at the University College of Nice and at Bristol and London universities. Since publication of his first novel, Le Procès verbal (The Interrogation), he has written over forty highly acclaimed books, while his work has been translated into thirty-six languages. He divides his time between France (Nice, Paris and Brittany), New Mexico and Mauritius. In 2008 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Hardback
Published February 2010
368 pages
ISBN: 978 1 84887 379 7
RRP: £16.99