Stories of the Sahara
SynopsisPlot
Leafing through the pages of National Geographic as a young girl growing up in Taiwan, Sanmao became enchanted by the infinite and wonderous landscape of the Sahara. Years later, in 1974, she sets out for the Spanish desert territory of El Aaiún in hopes of becoming the first female explorer to cross the hauntingly beautiful expanse. Her boyfriend José would have to wait, or join her. He packs his things, leaves Madrid, and asks Sanmao to marry him. As Sanmao settles in to married life alongside the indigenous people of the Western Sahara, she is confronted by a culture and desert lifestyle that both captivate and confound her. Drawn in by the mystery of such desolate lands but disappointed by the drawl of life as a perpetual outsider, Sanmao begins to wonder if the desert is what she imagined it to be, and if her insatiably curious heart can beat forever in just one place.
Story
About this book
Sanmao was born in China in 1943 and grew up in Taiwan, where she first encountered the Sahara through the pages of National Geographic. In 1974, she traveled to El Aaiún, then a Spanish-controlled territory in the Western Sahara, drawn by the vast and quiet landscape she had studied from afar. Her boyfriend José left Madrid to join her there and proposed marriage. Together they settled into daily life in the desert, far from the cities and conventions they had known.
The book collects Sanmao's accounts of living among the indigenous people of the Western Sahara. She writes about the routines of married life, encounters with local customs she found both fascinating and bewildering, and the slow realization that the desert she had imagined did not always match the one she inhabited. Loneliness and curiosity sit close together in her telling, as she navigates being a permanent outsider in a place she chose freely.
Stories of the Sahara became enormously popular across the Chinese-speaking world, selling an estimated fifteen million copies. For decades it existed only in Chinese. The edition carrying ISBN 978-1408881873 marks its first translation into English, with an introduction by Sharlene Teo.
