In the first half of the twentieth centruy, European writers plunged into the stony, baking expanse of the Sahara, drawn by their own strange dreams. What did they hope to find? And what was really there?In Desert Divers - part travel book, part literary history and part confession - Sven Lindqvist follows their paths into the Sahara and drags to the surface the history of colonial slaughter and exploitation that enabled Europeans to conduct their one-sided affair with the desert.

Sven Lindqvist was born in Stockholm in 1932 and still lives there. He has travelled extensively through Asia, Africa and Latin America. He is the author of thirty books, including A History of Bombing, Exterminate All the Brutes and Desert Divers, shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.