The Desert

Hailed as a masterpiece when it was first published in France in 1977, The

Desert tells the story of al-Mammi, a young exiled prince of a now-destroyed

Jewish kingdom in southern Morocco in the late fourteenth century. Fighting

battles in the service of kings and narrowly escaping imprisonment, the prince

travels the Islamic world absorbing lessons, often painfully, on how to govern

himself, as well as a country. At that same time, al-Mammi engages upon a

spiritual journey to obtain inner wisdom rather than material riches. Memmi

chronicles the prince's fortunes as they rise and fall, drawing upon the traditions

of Maghrebian storytelling and Arabian tales to offer a highly imaginative and

allegorical novel that provocatively blends history with fiction.