Desert

stretched out like the sea, glistening with salt. It undulated, created white cities with magnificent walls, with domes that burst like bubbles. The sun burned their faces and their hands, the light hollowed out its dizziness at the time of day when the shadows of men are like bottomless wells.

Each evening, their bleeding lips sought the cool wells, the brackish mud of alkaline rivers. Then, the cold night enveloped them, crushed their limbs and took their breath away, weighed down on their necks. There was no end to freedom, it was as vast as the wide world, beautiful and cruel as the light, gentle as the eyes of water. Each day, at the first light of dawn, the free men went back toward their home, toward the south, toward the place where no one else could live. Each day, with the same motions, they erased the traces of their fires, they buried their excrement. Turned toward the desert, they carried out their wordless prayer. They drifted away, as if in a dream, disappeared.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JEAN-MARIE GUSTAVE LE CLEZIO, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born on April 13th, 1940 in Nice, a descendant of a family from Brittany that immigrated to Mauritius in the eighteenth century. He pursued his undergraduate studies at the Institut d’Etudes Litteraires in Nice and earned his doctoral degree in early Mexican history from the University of Perpignan. His first novel, Le proces-verbal (The Interrogation), won the Prix Renaudot in 1963 and established his reputation as one of France’s preeminent contemporary writers. He was awarded the Grand Prix Paul Morand by the Academie Francaise in 1980 for his novel Desert. He has published more than forty works of fiction and anthropology, as well as several books for children. Mr. Le Clezio has lived in France, Mauritius, Thailand, Mexico, Panama, the United States, and England. He and his wife currently divide their time between New Mexico, Nice, and the island of Mauritius.

Copyright

A Verba Mundi Book

David R. Godine · Publisher · Boston

Published in eBook format by David R. Godine, Publisher

Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com

This is a Verba Mundi Book published in 2009 by David R. Godine, Publisher

Post Office Box 450

Jaffrey, New Hampshire 03452

www.godine.com

Originally published in French in 1980 as Desert by Editions Gallimard, Paris

Copyright © 1980 by Editions Gallimard

Translation copyright © 2009 by C. Dickson

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information contact Permissions, David R. Godine, Publisher, 9 Hamilton Place, Boston, Massachusetts 02108.

Cet ouvrage, publie dans le cadre d’un programme d’aide a la publication, beneficie du soutien du Ministere des Affaires etrangeres et du Service Culturel de l’Ambassade de France aux Etats-Unis.

This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Le Clezio, J.M.G. (Jean-Marie Gustave), 1940–

[Desert. English]

Desert / by J.M.G Le Clezio.

p. cm.

HARDCOVER ISBN: 978-1-56792-386-5

SOFTCOVER ISBN: 978-1-56792-387-2

E-BOOK ISBN: 978-1-56792-444-2

I. Title.

PQ2672.E25D413 2009

843?.914–dc22

2009003264