Description

By (author) Scheele, Judith

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A radical new account of the Sahara – from pre-history to the present day

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”A fascinating travelogue and history of the world”s largest hot desert … fresh, original and energising” THE TIMESIn this sweeping account, Judith Scheele reveals the rich history and complex reality of the world”s largest hot desert. Drawing on decades of research, and years spent living in the region, Scheele leads us from the ancient Roman Empire through the bloody colonial era to the geopolitics of the present – and the race for resources that will define the future. The Sahara covers parts of eleven countries, and Scheele follows in the footsteps and tyre-tracks of the many people who cross the desert, taking us into the homes, mosques, palm groves and battlefields where history is written, spoken and remade.The result is a masterful portrait of the Sahara. Encompassing the geology, religions, peoples and politics that shape and fracture the region, Shifting Sands tells the immersive story of a place whose future holds implications for us all.

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Engrossing, enlightening, original … brilliant

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A detailed, often gritty, picture of a fragile world … a clearsighted study of life on the edge

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A fascinating and intimate perspective of the region from the ground-up

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Meticulously investigated, revealing the realities of the Earth”s largest desert

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Scheele presents a detailed, often gritty, picture of a fragile world. Her travels trace the web of exchanges, linguistic and material, that crisscross a harsh, vast and sometimes impassable terrain … Instead of “mental maps of vertical and historically immutable trade routes,” Scheele finds a pattern of pathways that, like the grazing routes of the pastoralists” livestock, shifts with changes in climate, economics and politics … this is a clearsighted and unsentimental study of life on the edge.

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A fascinating travelogue and history of the world”s largest hot desert … Fresh, original and energising

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Scheele describes adaptation to the desert environment well… Her aim is to challenge ”two millennia” of preconceptions about ”the Sahara, its people, its history, even its geography”

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In Shifting Sands, Scheele sets out to dispel the many fantasies about the Sahara and give a more accurate picture of a much-misunderstood region. Throughout this engaging study, she favours the local detail over the remote, bird”s-eye view, the Saharan experience over the outside perspective… fascinating… much of the two decades” worth of admirable research on which it is based would simply not be possible today

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Scheele unveils [a] meticulously investigated narrative, to reveal the realities of the Earth”s largest desert. She questions the standard bird”s-eye view and zooms in to examine the details … [and] takes the reader from the ancient Roman Empire to modern African countries and the scenes of contemporary regional battles, exposing fascinating truths about desert life along the journey

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A captivating and indispensable work: Scheele clears the dust from our eyes to reveal the intricacies of a region few of us know nearly as well as we might believe.

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A gritty, deeply engaged, history of the fusion of peoples whose homeland is the Sahara. This is a fascinating and intimate perspective of the region from the ground-up: complete with plastic sandals, smugglers, migrants, border boom towns upheld by the Sahara”s enduring love affair with both camel and truck

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A stunningly original and deeply empathetic guided tour of the world”s greatest de