{"product_id":"desert-book-j-m-g-le-clezio-9781848873803","title":"Desert","description":"Young Nour is a North African desert tribesman. It is 1909, and as the First World War looms Nour's tribe - the Blue Men - are forced from their lands by French colonial invaders. Spurred on by thirst, hunger, suffering, they seek guidance from a great spiritual leader. The holy man sends them even further from home, on an epic journey northward in the hope of finding a land in which they can again be free.  Decades later, an orphaned descendant of the Blue Men - a girl called Lalla - is living in a shantytown on the coast of Morocco. Lalla has inherited both the pride and the resilience of her tribe - and she will need them, as she makes a bid to escape her forced marriage to a wealthy older man. She flees to Marseilles, where she experiences both the hardships of immigrant life - as a hotel maid - and the material prosperity of those who succeed - when she becomes a successful model. And yet Lalla does not betray the legacy of her ancestors.  In these two narratives set in counterpoint, Nobel Prize-winning novelist J M G Le Clezio tells - powerfully and movingly - the story of the 'last free men' and of Europe's colonial legacy - a story of war and exile and of the endurance of the human spirit.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49536504103185,"sku":"GOR001696633","price":10.39,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1848873808.jpg?v=1751432653","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/desert-book-j-m-g-le-clezio-9781848873803","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}