8.4 /10 1 Votes
Language English Publication date 1959 Pages 330 pages Originally published 1959 Genre Travel literature | 4.2/5 Goodreads Publisher Longmans, London Media type Hardback & Paperback ISBN 0-14-144207-7 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Wilfred thesiger s arabian sands in his own words
Arabian Sands is a 1959 book by explorer and travel writer Wilfred Thesiger. The book focuses on the author's travels across the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula between 1945 and 1950. It attempted to capture the lives of the Bedu people and other inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula. It is considered a classic of travel literature.
Contents
The book largely reflects on the changes and large scale development that took place after the Second World War and the subsequent gradual erosion of traditional Bedouin ways of life that had previously existed unaltered for thousands of years.
Context
Wilfred Thesiger was born into a privileged English background, the son of a diplomat, educated at Eton and Oxford. As soon as he could, on his first summer holiday at university, he travelled to Istanbul, going out by tramp steamer, back by train: the first of many adventurous journeys. At age 23 he went on his first exploration, of the Awash River in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). He became a colonial officer in Sudan, working in the desert region of Darfur and then the swampy Sudd, where he was responsible for shooting lions. While in Darfur he journeyed with local people by camel and visited the Tibesti mountains in the Sahara. In the Second World War he fought to liberate Abyssinia under the eccentric but charismatic Orde Wingate, and in the Special Air Service behind enemy lines in the Western Desert of north Africa. After the war he joined the anti-locust unit of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, taking the chance between 1945 and 1949 to travel in the Empty Quarter of Arabia. Arabian Sands describes his two crossings of that region.
Thesiger begins his Introduction by saying that if he had thought of writing a book about his journeys, he "should have kept fuller notes which now would have both helped and hindered me". He did however keep some kind of diary of his travels, later polishing his notes in letters to his mother, and then (years later) writing up his books from those. His two Arabian journeys described here took place between 1946 and 1948; the book appeared in 1959.
Editions
Arabian Sands first appeared in 1959 in London (Longmans) and New York (Dutton). It was reprinted in 1960, 1963, 1964 (concise and Penguin editions), 1965, 1971, 1974, 1977, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1990 (Collins), 1991 (with second preface), 2000, 2005 (Folio Society), 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
It has been translated into languages including Swedish (Arabisk öken 1960) Spanish (Arenas de arabia 1963, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2008), Italian (Sabbie arabe 1984, 2002), German (Die Brunnen der Wüste 2002), French (Le Désert des Déserts 1978) and Arabic (1994).
Book
Modern
One of Thesiger's biographers, Michael Asher, wrote in The Guardian that "his description of the traditional life of the Bedu, Arabian Sands (1959), [was] probably the finest book ever written about Arabia and a tribute to a world now lost forever."
The critic Michael Dirda commented that "for years I meant to read Arabian Sands ... Now that I have, I can sheepishly join the chorus of those who revere the book as one of the half dozen greatest works of modern English travel writing." He calls the book "the austere masterpiece", comparing it with Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World, C. M. Doughty's Travels in Arabia Deserta and T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He notes that Thesiger's writing can be vivid, "but in general his prose is terse, declarative, coolly observational." Dirda contrasts this coolness with the passion in his photographs, which "make clear his love for this bleak, unforgiving terrain" or the handsome young men such as Salim bin Ghabaisha.
The Telegraph called the book a "precise yet emotionally charged account of his desert journeys", adding that it "gained him a new reputation in late middle age as a writer, albeit one influenced by the romanticised prose of Lawrence and Doughty."
National Geographic includes the book in its "100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time", commenting that it is "written with great respect" for the Bedouin, "a door opening on a vanished feudal world."
Legacy
In 2008, the Emirates film director Majid Abdulrazak produced a film version of Arabian Sands with actors from the UAE and Oman in major roles.