Michael Ondaatje · 1992 · overland

Michael Ondaatje's 1992 novel, told in fragments from the bedside of a man burned beyond recognition in a Tuscan villa at the end of the Second World War. He is Almasy, a desert explorer, and his memories return to the Sahara of the 1930s: the mapping of the Gilf Kebir, the Cave of Swimmers, and an adulterous love for Katharine Clifton that ends in a plane crash, a desperate desert walk, and fire. This route traces that desert past, from Cairo to the cave to the long walk to El Taj.

1. 1
   Cairo

   Count Almasy and the explorers of the Royal Geographical Society set out from Cairo to map the last blank spaces of the Libyan Desert.

2. 2
   The Cave of Swimmers

   In the Gilf Kebir, Almasy finds a cave painted with ancient swimmers, and falls into a doomed love with Katharine Clifton; here, after the crash, he leaves her with his book of Herodotus and a promise to return.

3. 3
   El Taj

   He walks three days across the desert to the British post at El Taj for help, but is taken for a spy and turned away, the first turn in a betrayal that will leave him faceless and dying in a Tuscan villa.