Shifting Sands

“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.”

“A gritty, deeply engaged history of the heroic 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, and border boom towns, upheld by the Sahara’s enduring love affair with both camel and truck.”

“From the first page, Judith Scheele brings to life this vast, remote and important part of the world. Her story is about the real world, focused on the heavily inhabited periphery of the Sahara and the myriad routes across it. Long viewed as impossibly alien and exotic, Scheele’s Sahara is embedded in the Mediterranean and in Sub-Saharan Africa and speaks to a vital, vibrant, cosmopolitan and troubled region. Read and learn.”

“For the first time, in this excellent book, the Sahara is given a present and a past as seen from the inside, rather than through the distorting projections of outsiders who want to cross or control its supposed emptiness. Judith Scheele is an ethnographer of the region who has long displayed astonishing range, skill, and courage. Here she shows herself to be a masterly historian too. She tracks between the present day and deep time to reveal her subject ‘from the bottom up.’ Read her beautifully written and compelling account, ready for every preconception you might have held about its subject matter to be overturned.”

“A stunningly original and deeply empathetic guided tour of the world’s greatest desert from someone who knows it well. Scheele’s Sahara is a lively one, a destination of its own. She understands both the land and the people, offering a unique perspective from the inside out. This is far and away the best book on a distant place that might represent our near future.”