Look at this boy, Lilu, walking in the desert. This walk is part of him, and so is the Sahara. He was almost born there since his Western parents worked there before being murdered when Lilu was 4. By the time the novel begins, he's 14 and still walking with the Tuareg tribe that took him in. Until a sandstorm separates him from his family. In this open-air huis-clos, the reader is struck by the beauty of the desert, inversely proportional to the possibility of living there. The scenery is grandiose, but the man is tiny. Immobility kills. It's a hand-to-hand combat. It's hard to imagine anything more inhospitable, more dangerous... apart from the madness of certain men. Lilu will be taken in by a group converted to radical Islam, then a UN camp, and he will discover the immensity of human conflict. One step ahead of the other to look around and look within; masterly!
