Shifting Sands

Reviews / Votes

A fascinating travelogue and history of the world's largest hot desert ... Fresh, original and energising * The Times * 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. -- Dominic Green * Wall Street Journal * 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 -- James Copnall * TLS * 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 -- Jules Stewart * Geographical * 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. -- Maxim Samson, author of Invisible Lines 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 -- Barnaby Rogerson, author * In Search of Ancient North Africa * A stunningly original and deeply empathetic guided tour of the world's greatest desert ... This is far and away the best book on a distant place that might represent our near future -- Gregory Mann, Professor of History, Columbia University In this excellent book, the Sahara is given a present and a past as seen from the inside ... Read her beautifully written and compelling account, ready for every preconception you might have held about its subject matter to be overturned -- Peregrine Horden, All Souls College, Oxford Scheele presents an invigorating alternate vision of the Sahara as a place where social life is deeply intertwined with ecology but which is just as varied and complex as anywhere. It's an immersive view of a too often oversimplified region * Publishers Weekly * Wide sweeping and remorselessly unromantic, Scheele's intention is to bring people into the history of the Sahara, its inhabitants as well as its natural features and also the relationship between the two ... None of the groups studied here are static. On the contrary, many of them - nomads, herders, conquering soldiers, smugglers, migrants - are on the move ... Most of all, this is a work that emphasises change over time -- Richard Vinen * Literary Review * ...takes us from the Roman era to the modern day, looking at the religious, cultural and political forces that have shaped this area. In doing so, [Scheele] unpicks a region as complex as it is fascinating, shining a light on the often detrimental impact that the West has had on this incredible land * Wanderlust * Praise for Smugglers and Saints of the Sahara:
'An irresistible read ... something particular and intensely human' -- Deborah Harrold * The Journal of North African Studies * An academic page-turner ... brilliantly written and thrilling to read -- Roman Loimeier * Africa * A must-read for anyone interested in the region -- Ghislaine Lydon - University of California, Los Angeles Scholarship is impressive, arguments convincing; this is the book many who know the Sahara will wish they had written -- E. Ann McDougall - University of Alberta