BBC Le Clezio

Just listen to lovely Harriett Gilbert (and readers) talking to French Nobel Laureate J M G Le Clezio about his dazzling bestseller «Desert» *. The early twentieth century journeyings of a young Tuareg, and his threatened family, are hauntingly interwoven with those of the symbolic desert orphan, Lalla . . . contrasting the wonders of this part-lost African culture with the traumas of unwanted immigrants in Europe, «Desert» is a rich, poetic and provocative epic. *[now translated into 24 languages] (JMG Le C is my absolutely number one writer of all time - PW)