OBOC - France

With such a rich literary tradition picking a writer from France was extremely difficult. In fact my love for historical fiction was largely due to Dumas. So while I could've gone Dumas, Proust or Hugo, I went with the little known (to me), Noble Prize winner J.M.G. Le Clezio and the book "Desert" which introduced him to the English speaking audience. This decision was largely based on one interview with Le Clezio that I heard on BBC.

Strongly repulsed by colonialism and its effect on Africa, Le Clezio's empathy lies completely with the colonized nomads. In Desert he uses two stories set in completely different times to describe the impact of colonialism. One is set in the early 1900s and is the story of Nour and his forced migration with the rest of his Tuareg tribe - the Blue Men. Directed by their spiritual leader "Water of the eyes" to head further North, the tribe is driven by thirst, hunger and the longing to find a land that will shelter and protect them. The other story is that of Lalla set in the 1970s. Lalla lives in the Project - somewhere in Morocco and is a descendant of the same tribe as Nour. Orphaned, brought up by her aunt, Lalla is drawn to the desert and resists everything that is thrown her way including a forced marriage. Escaping to Marseilles, she joins the ranks of the shadow of immigrants who flood France from her ex-colonies and ekes out a living as a cleaner. Discovered by a photographer she finds glory and fame as the model Hawa, but the wealth and fame mean nothing to her. Drawn back to the desert she returns to give birth to her child. Two other main characters in the novel are Hartani - the mute shepherd who is Lalla's only friend and lover and Naman the fisherman who is a fascinating story teller.

Desert is a slow moving novel and often it feels like reading poetry. The novel is extremely visual as Le Clezio paints a picture of the desert landscape, its people, the relation between land and the creatures that live off the land. Although intuitively Blue is the last color one associates with the Desert, that was the color that flashed in my mind's eye as I read the novel - be it the Blue Men, the Blue Sky, or the distant Blue Ocean.

The novel would have been a very hard read if I had not listened to Le Clezio's interview in the BBC world book club. That gave me a great perspective of where he is coming from. His compassion for the Third World, the disenfranchised, the nomads of the desert or the immigrants in France is deep rooted. Even as a child he had been impacted by the effect of colonialism on the locals in Nigeria.  Unlike Lalla or the Hartani who clearly know that their home is in the desert, Le Clezio himself is of mixed nationality  - born in France to parents with Mauritius origins, living in New Mexico, with a love for Sweden, he is in some sense an exile himself finding his home in the French language.

This book is not for everyone. It is by no means an easy read, and Lalla at first glance can be a hard character to identify with. Personally the book struck a chord with me because this is in some sense a book that deals with migrations, separations and finding one's place in a globalized world.