Cover art for Shifting Sands
Published
Profile Trade, August 2025
ISBN
9781788166454
Format
Hardcover, 384 pages
Dimensions
23.6cm × 15.6cm × 3.8cm

Shifting Sands A Human History of the Sahara

Not yet released
Due August 5, 2025.
Fast $7.95 flat-rate shipping!
Only pay $7.95 per order within Australia, including end-to-end parcel tracking.
100% encrypted and secure
We adhere to industry best practice and never store credit card details.
Talk to real people
Contact us seven days a week – our staff are here to help.

Blue-veiled nomads, camels crossing infinite dunes, oases shimmering on the horizon: ready-made images of the Sahara are easy to conjure. But they can never truly capture a region that crosses eleven countries and is home to millions.

This sweeping account upends old fantasies, revealing the far more interesting reality of the Earth's largest hot desert. Drawing on decades of research, and years spent living in the region, anthropologist Judith Scheele takes us from Libya to Mali, Algeria to Chad, from the ancient Roman Empire to contemporary regional battles and fraught international diplomacy, questioning every easy cliche and exposing fascinating truths along the way.

From the geology of the region, to the life it shelters, to the religions, languages and cultural and political forces that shape and fracture it, this is a landmark work that tells the compelling story of a place that sits at the heart of our world, and whose future holds implications for us all.

Related books