The most recommended books on the sahara desert

This remarkable tale is not as well known as others, in part because it was written in 1817 and by a less accomplished writer, but it is hard to beat as a true account of nearly unsurvivable hardship. Captain James Riley, captured when his American ship—Commerce—runs aground south of Morocco, is taken into the Sahara desert along with several of his crew as slaves of Bedouins. Barefoot, terribly sunburnt, forced to drink camel urine, they walk hundreds of miles behind their master’s camels until finally ransomed by an American consul. This shocking reversal of the usual slavery tale is a poignant indictment of the slave trade. Abraham Lincoln claimed that Sufferings in Africa, along with The Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress, had the most effect on his political ideology.

As a professor, I know that sometimes just getting through four years of college can be its own epic struggle, especially when you’re queer and half-Nigerian, like Sahara.

“The unfortunates” is the name Sahara and her friends use to describe the deaths of too many of their fellow Black students. As if that isn’t enough, Sahara sometimes feels like her only companion is her “Life Partner,” the name she gives to the ugly voice of her depression.

I loved the way The Unfortunates is told as an in-your-face “thesis” to Sahara’s university committee that mixes humor with high-stakes struggles. Follow along as Sahara figures out how to survive in the face of a campus and culture that is not just indifferent, but outright hostile.

Khan al-Khalili is a famous bazaar in the historic heart of Cairo, and the setting of this powerful and thought-provoking novel by Naguib Mahfouz. One of the most important Egyptian and Arab authors of the Twentieth century, in 1988, Mahfouz became the first Arabic-language writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mahfouz spent much of his life in and around Khan al-Khalili, which gives this novel an intimacy and sense of place akin to Dicken's writing about Victorian London. It is 1942, and Egypt is tense as the war moves closer and closer to the capital, and Cairenes from different generations thrust together in the crowded neighborhood variously argue for and against tradition, modernity, religious faith, and secularism. This is a great read, and even better if you’re able to read it while sitting in a café in Khan al-Khalili. 

The Sahara Desert, more used to Bedouins and camels, had never seen a motorcycle before let alone two Englishwomen riding one. Setting off from London in December 1934, Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron rode their 600cc Panther through Africa from north to south. They maintained a ‘why not?’ attitude that got them through despite frequent punctures, delays whilst waiting for permits and none of the technology provided for today’s motorcycle traveller. These two qualified engineers who had already broken motorcycle speed records at Brooklands, took their motorcycle outfit and trailer with not even a compass... just a map that showed each oasis on the way. I was in a permanent state of suspense when reading about each encounter they experienced and their outstanding ingenuity and perseverance.

Set amid the final days of the Second World Way in an abandoned Italian village, it tells the story of Hana, a nurse tending to her sole remaining patient. Rescued from a burning plane, the anonymous Englishman is something of a mystery. But with the help of a copy of Herodotus' The Histories, which the airman had on his person when rescued, Hana begins to piece together his life.

I felt the writing twists from moments of great beauty and clarity to whole sections that are almost impenetrable in their poetic depth. Switches of narrative viewpoint make the reader work hard at times, but it’s well worth the effort for this poignant tale that remains with you long after you have read the last page.

Saint-Exupery’s descriptions of what he sees and feels during enthralling activities amid stunning landscapes left me enchanted. The feelings he captures extend beyond the mere act of flying and into human relationships and our quest for meaning, written in beautiful, often philosophical prose. He approached flying as a metaphor for life and the human condition. Even if I will never fly, he made me care. 

Libyan Sands tells the story of Ralph Bagnold’s extraordinary expeditions into the North African deserts between the two world wars. Remarkably for the time, Bagnold chose to use not camels, as his predecessors had done, but specially-adapted Ford Model-A motorcars, in which he covered tens of thousands of miles in extraordinarily inhospitable, waterless conditions, travelling where no motor vehicle and hardly any people had ever been before. The knowledge he accrued would lead him, ultimately, to found and lead the Long Range Desert Group in the Second World War. 

Having written about extraordinary journeys into the polar wastes, and having come to understand, through meeting many of the explorers involved, what it is that has driven them into those wildernesses, what most caught my imagination in Bagnold’s book was his incredibly vivid descriptions of the desert, a barren wilderness that he grew not only to respect, but to love deeply:… show more.

This book offers a poignant personal view of Sufism by a Scottish-born actor and writer who became disillusioned with a world “where people teach but know nothing, where the sentences flow on endlessly but lead nowhere.” He seeks and finds wisdom and solace in the deserts of Sahara under the guidance of a Sufi master to whom he dedicates his short but powerful book. When I picked it up as a reading for my class on Sufism, I thought I would find a usual mushy account of Sufism by a starry-eyed neophyte. The book was anything but: it was eloquent, deeply personal, and felicitously free from platitudes. I was pleasantly surprised and so were my students. I recommend it to everyone interested in spiritual quests regardless of his or her background.    

One of Cussler’s earlier novels featuring Dirk Pitt, Cussler sends his erstwhile hero deep into a desert landscape where he throws all manner of problems at them.

As Pitt and co battle to survive the harsh conditions, they are tested to the limit as they must not only escape the arid landscape, but do in time to foil a dastardly plot. While perhaps not as much of a literary heavyweight as some of the other authors mentioned on this list, Cussler is brilliant at writing a rollicking good yarn.

A mere 172 pages, this book examines the brutality of European colonialism in the 19th century, uncovering genocides I had never heard of that were perpetrated by so-called “civilized people” on so-called “primitive people.” 

The justification for this barbarism was that they for the benefit of the people annihilated because they could not live in the modern world. 

That justification is the same one often used on this side of the ocean for the genocide or “removal” of Indigenous people from their ancient lands and for the enslavement of African people who were “improved” by being around white people. 

Part travelogue, part history, part literary analysis – Lindqvist focuses on Joseph Conrad’s novel The Heart of Darkness – the book cannot be easily categorized and when reading it I often wondered what he was doing. 

But my understanding of both colonialism and what the Europeans did when they came to… show more.