Overview
This book follows the author on a personal journey into the Sahara and examination into the racist assumptions of those writers who have gone before him. Taking as a metaphor the divers who cleaned out desert wells, Lindqvist drags to the surface the story of colonial slaughter and sexual exploitation which contaminate his boyhood idols.
Synopsis
Desert Divers, shortlisted for the 2001 Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Book Award, is, by turns, a travel book, confessional narrative, and history of French colonialism in North Africa. Following in the steps of Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Andre Gide, Sven Lindqvist dives into his own dreams and past while exploring the dark side of history — the colonial slaughter and sexual exploitation that allowed Europeans to conduct their one-sided affair with the Sahara.