The Desert Shore: Literatures of the Sahel

Though Sahelian culture likely dates back more than five thousand years—encompassing Africa's greatest empires—the Sahel remains little known in the English-speaking world. Redressing this situation, The Desert Shore offers a rich sampling of the contemporary literatures of the region, along with contextualizing chapters by critics from Africa, Europe, and North America. The authors not only demonstrate the resilience and cultural wealth of modern Sahelian society, but also provide startling insights into its distinct perspectives on writing, literature, and language itself. They reveal Sahelian literatures to be a body of work that challenges Western scholars to reexamine many of their deepest presuppositions.