Sahara Unveiled

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

PW praised this "vivid account" of a journalist's trek from Algiers to Dakar. (July)

Library Journal

Langewiesche's journey begins at the Mediterranean in Algiers. Hitching rides on trucks, he heads south into increasingly desolate territory, passing through the Algerian towns of Biskra and Ta-ranasset, on into Mali, Niger, and finally to Mauritania, on the Atlantic. He is most interested in the present-day people of the Sahara and how they cope with their inhospitable desert environment and with the modern world. A foreign correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and a commercial pilot, Langewiesche writes in an economical, straightforward style that unflaggingly retains interest. He points out that the old ways of life for Saharans are no longer possible but that attempts at modernization are doomed because the Sahara cannot be subdued. He offers no solutions. In attempting to be "unsentimental," Langewiesche comes across as humorless and relentlessly negative. His assessments seem somewhat distorted by a deeply cynical general attitude and by plain physical discomfort. He is an adventurous traveler but a grumpy one. Recommended for public libraries and African studies collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/96.]Mary C. Kalfatovic, Telesec Lib. Svce., Washington, D.C.

Donna Seaman

Langewiesche is a foreign correspondent for the "Atlantic Monthly", author of "Cutting for Sign" 1993, and a man who knows how to travel lightly, observe intently, and transform his complex experiences into prose as polished as glass. Fascinated by the Sahara, he decided to become intimate with it by traversing its entire, sun-blasted length, from Algiers to Timbuktu, a journey fraught with danger both natural and manmade. Death is always just an empty water jug away, and war, fueled by old ethnic feuds, unfinished business from French colonial times, and radical Islamic groups, is brewing in this vast sandy sea. Langewiesche, commandingly laconic and shrewd, has some very frank things to say about Saharan culture as he chronicles the region's inevitable poverty, ritualized corruption, and abrupt cruelty. Moving effortlessly from his own riveting anecdotes to those of historical import, Langewiesche pauses to explain the physics of sand and the physiology of the camel, analyze the status of Saharan women, describe Neolithic rock art, and characterize the gritty reality of life in isolated oases. An unforgettable and profoundly involving travelogue.