The Swedish Academy, in awarding J.M.G. Le Clezio the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, praised Desert as Le Clezio's definitive breakthrough as a novelist. Published in France in 1980, Desert received the Grand Prix Paul Morand from the Academie Francaise, was translated into twenty-three languages, and quickly proved to be a best-selling novel in many countries around the world.
Available for the first time in English translation, Desert is a novel composed of two alternating narratives, set in counterpoint. The first takes place in the desert between 1909 and 1912 and evokes the migration of a young adolescent boy, Nour, and his people, the Blue Men, notorious warriors of the desert. Driven from their lands by French colonial soldiers, Nour's tribe has come to the valley of the Saguiet El Hamra to seek the aid of the great spiritual leader known as Water of the Eyes. The religious chief sends them out from the holy city of Smara into the desert to travel still further. Spurred on by thirst, hunger, and suffering, Nour's tribe and others flee northward in the hopes of finding a land that can harbor them at last.
The second narrative relates the contemporary story of Lalla, a descendant of the Blue Men. Though she is an orphan living in a shantytown known as the Project near a coastal city in Morocco, the blood of her proud, obstinate tribe runs in her veins. All too soon, Lalla must flee to escape a forced marriage with an older, wealthy man. She travels to France, undergoing many trials there, from working in a brothel to success as a highly paid fashion model, but she never betrays the blood of her ancestors.
Bored beyond belief I actually finished this book just to see what the folks in Stockholm saw in this book. I never saw it. I read many books set in different countries and/or different periods. That is what attracted me to this book. Perhaps the Swedes just had to award a prize to an anti-colonial book. Whatever. Don't waste your time on this one. If you want to go some place in time and space read the Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng.
This isn't a traditional novel, it certainly don't contain a strong plot where the interaction between characters drive it forward. She meets other characters, she moves through a landscape, but she doesn't understand them anymore than they understand her.
It's a beautiful poetical meditation about the inner-life of the people of the Maghreb. The main character that you spend the most time with is an uneducated orphan that creates explanations for what happens around her out of superstitions, stories told by the fire, and dreams. Seen through her eyes, there's a lot of magic and wonder in the desert. It's all about the images.
2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature J.M.G. Le Clezio presents Desert, a novel about the struggle for survival of a desert warrior culture, "the last free men". Consisting of two alternating viewpoints in contrast over the course of a century. Beginning in a North African desert in 1909 with the migratory journey of a young boy and his "blue men" desert warrior people, forced out of their land by French colonial soldiers, and interwoven with the story of an orphan girl in modern Marseille descended from the desert people, Desert is an enthralling and unforgettable read, flawlessly translated from the original French by C. Dickson. At once both a personal human story and a saga of the (often cruel) legacy of colonization, Desert is highly recommended particularly for public and college library collections.
