The Wisdom of the Sands

Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert. The final, deeply-felt summing-up of the author's experience and his philosophy of life. Choosing a desert prince as his protagonist and narrator, he presents the timeless problems of humanity against the austere background of the wilderness. The book abounds in vivid pictures of desert life, forays and sandstorms, mirage-born madness, beleaguered cities, caravans going their perilous ways. It may be read just for the sake of these scenes, so incomparably described, or read as an allegory of man and his grandeur, of his ends and the means that may lead to them and, most clearly of all, of the moral and spiritual values that unite the individual to God.