The Friend of the Desert
A Novel
Existential and curiously hypnotic, Pablo d'Ors evokes the sharp stylized prose of Bolaño, Bernhard, and DeLillo in this strange tale of one man's repeated forays into the desert, and the ultimate silence it contains.
"Thanks to the back cover of a book I knew that there lived in Brno a man who had dedicated a good portion of his life to traveling through many of the world's deserts." So begins Pavel's story, as a series of mysterious circumstances lead him to change the course of his life. On his repeated trips to the Sahara, first as part of an enigmatic organization called Friends of the Desert and later on his own, Pavel explores the drifting sands, and, ultimately, something approaching infinity.…