This is an engrossing, enlightening, original, at times brilliant, maddening, frustrating and disappointing book. It will appeal, initially at least, to anyone with a passing interest in the largest hot desert on Earth and the lives of the people who inhabit it. It will go down well, too, with those in the West who take a dim view of the West and all the rigmarole they attribute to it, from right-wing, anti-immigration governments to the sins of capitalism, colonialism, consumerism, racism and imperialism. Academics will love it ... Brimming with surprises and counterfactuals ... If Scheele is good on the Saharan environment, she is even better on its people, and this is where Shifting Sands comes alive. The writing is immediate and atmospheric, and the prose is crisp and insightful. I found myself looking forward to the interspersed first-person travel sections. Whereas the political analysis grows wearily familiar—the West bad, the Sahara good—the travel writing is fresh, original and energising ... Academic jargon rarely adds to the summum bonum of human existence or the gaiety of nations, but Scheele deploys it at will ... At its worst the tone is preachy, ... [Goes] a step too far. Her ivory tower has blasted into space and is on its way to another planet.

A superb survey of an often-overlooked land ... Scheele bumps over desert roads in rough company to deliver a vivid portrait of wildly disparate people and nations.