The dune's twisted edge

the long version

"Part travelogue, part literary criticism, this book brings together six interlinked essays that probe the physical, cultural, and imaginative geography of the eastern seaboard of the Levant and its deserts. Its essay evolves out of the author's own travels through a certain region: the Judean desert extending to the Dead Sea, Wadi Rumm south of Petra, the Negev of modern-day Israel, the Galilee, the Arabian desert in which the great pre-Islamic poets once roamed. When the author is not encountering other presences, such as the Bedouin and writers from the distant and near past, he finds himself stumbling over the physical traces of vanished civilizations."--publisher.