{"product_id":"9781848873803-secondhand-desert","title":"Desert","description":"Young Nour is a North African desert tribesman. It is 1909, and as the First World War looms Nour's tribe - the Blue Men - are forced from their lands by French colonial invaders. Spurred on by thirst, hunger, suffering, they seek guidance from a great spiritual leader. The holy man sends them even further from home, on an epic journey northward in the hope of finding a land in which they can again be free.\n\nDecades later, an orphaned descendant of the Blue Men - a girl called Lalla - is living in a shantytown on the coast of Morocco. Lalla has inherited both the pride and the resilience of her tribe - and she will need them, as she makes a bid to escape her forced marriage to a wealthy older man. She flees to Marseilles, where she experiences both the hardships of immigrant life - as a hotel maid - and the material prosperity of those who succeed - when she becomes a successful model. And yet Lalla does not betray the legacy of her ancestors.\n\nIn these two narratives set in counterpoint, Nobel Prize-winning novelist J M G Le Clezio tells - powerfully and movingly - the story of the 'last free men' and of Europe's colonial legacy - a story of war and exile and of the endurance of the human spirit.","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49176477499611,"sku":"9781848873803-SECONDHAND","price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/3e2ebdf9-d631-46be-817e-fe85a166b928.jpg?v=1787572030","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9781848873803-secondhand-desert","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}