Arabian Sands - Hardcover

Thesiger, Wilfred

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002170051 ISBN 13: 9780002170055

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2000

Synopsis

Wilfred Thesiger charts the time he spent living with the Bedu, including his legendary traverses of the Empty Quarter.

Wilfred Thesiger is the last of the great British eccentric explorers, a legendary figure renowned for his travels though some of the most inaccessible places on earth. Arabian Sands was his widely acclaimed first book and is recognized as one of the great travel classics.

His evocative prose and stunning photographs capture the spirit of the proud tribespeople who became his friends and the harsh landscape he inhabited with them in a way very few westeners have.

About this title

Review:

Praise for Arabian Sands:

‘one of the greatest travel books of English literature’
Sunday Telegraph

Praise for Among the Mountains:

‘a matchless portrait of a vanished world’
Daily Telegraph

‘the photographs alone make it worth a place on the traveller’s bookshelf’
Wanderlust

‘Here is true grandeur in the landscape and true dignity in the man’
Scotsman

From the Back Cover:

With this book Wilfred Thesiger took his place among the few great Arabian travellers – not only as an explorer, but as a writer.

'Arabian Sands' covers the five years ending in 1950 which, with the exception of brief interruptions only, Thesiger spent in and around the Empty Quarter, the half million square miles of one of the cruellest deserts of the world. Before him, no othe trraveller European or Arab – apart from the Bedu who live there – had twice dared to cross those empty wastes. Travelling without European companions and living as an Arab, Thesiger's experience and knowledge of the desert life are unique – and will remain so, for the world he describes has vanished, succumbing to the invasion of technicians in search of oil.

Thesiger's account of the Arabian Sands and its people, its tribal warfare and ancient history, its daily life and landscape is widely hailed as a classic of Arabian travel literature.

'The crowning touches have been placed on this exploratory activity in Arabia by Wilfred Thesiger who is probably the greatest of all the explorers'
ST JOHN PHILBY

'This splendid book, magnificently illustrated with the author's photographs, is a feast.'
DAILY EXPRESS

'Wilfred Thesiger is perhaps the last, and certainly one of the greatest, of the British travellers among the Arabs'
LT GEN. SIR JOHN GLUBB, 'Sunday Times'

'A MJOR ADDITION TO THE LITERATURE OF EXPLORATION'
PETER WORSLEY, 'Guardian'

'THE LAST GREAT BOOK ON ARABIAN TRAVEL'
ECONOMIST

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0002170051
• ISBN 13: 9780002170055
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368