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Shifting Sands

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What to expect

An expansive history of the Sahara from prehistory to the present that shows how Saharans have, over time, built complex and cosmopolitan lives despite scarcity, conquest, and the relentless challenges of the desert environment

What comes to mind when we think about the Sahara? Rippling sand dunes, sun-blasted expanses, camel drivers and their caravans perhaps. Or famine, climate change, civil war, desperate migrants stuck in a hostile environment. The Sahara stretches across 3.2 million square miles, hosting several million inhabitants and a corresponding variety of languages, cultures, and livelihoods. But beyond ready-made images of exoticism and squalor, we know surprisingly little about its history and the people who call it home.   

Shifting Sands is about that other Sahara, not the empty wasteland of the romantic imagination but the vast and highly differentiated space in which Saharan peoples and, increasingly, new arrivals from other parts of Africa live, work, and move. It takes us from the ancient Roman Empire through the bloody colonial era to the geopolitics of the present, questioning easy clichés and exposing fascinating truths along the way. From the geology of the region to the religions, languages, and cultural and political forces that shape and fracture it, this landmark book tells the compelling story of a place that sits at the heart of our world, and whose future holds implications for us all.

Critics Review

“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 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.”—Barnaby Rogerson, author of The Heirs of Muhammad
“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.”—Joe Studwell, author of How Asia Works
“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.”—Peregrine Horden, All Souls College, Oxford
“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.”—Gregory Mann, Columbia University
“Through her extensive travels across its fabled landscapes, Judith Scheele opens the hidden world of the Sahara from every point of the compass. Combining the life experiences of the women and men she encountered in years of anthropological research with a deep dive into scholarship spanning prehistoric to modern times, Scheele takes us to places we will probably never see for ourselves, and makes us wish that we could. A brilliant, unforgettable book.”—Eugene Rogan, author of The Damascus Events
“Shifting Sands takes us into a fascinating human Sahara where Mega Lake Chad was probably home to our earliest ancestors and a vast, urban civilization contemporaneous with the Roman Empire flourished in Libya’s Fezzan. Scheele’s Sahara is defined by its timeless human connectivity. Time and space converge and diverge to propel readers through the lived experiences of Saharans Scheele has skillfully rescued from—and for—history, during years of fieldwork in Algeria, Mali, and Chad.”—E. Ann McDougall, University of Alberta
Author Judith Scheele
Narrator Lucy Paterson
Duration 13 hours and 7 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781668650493
Format Audiobook
Publisher Hachette Audio
Genre African history, General and world history, Middle Eastern history, Regional / International studies
Availability US

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