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Desert Love
Cover by Robert McGinnis
Lt. Lucien Auligny, stationed at a lonely oasis in French Africa encounters Ramie, a very young and beatiful Arab girl. For a price, her father allows Auligny to have access to the girl. As the months pass, Auligny becomes obsessed with her...
Lt. Lucien Auligny, stationed at a lonely oasis in French Africa encounters Ramie, a very young and beatiful Arab girl. For a price, her father allows Auligny to have access to the girl. As the months pass, Auligny becomes obsessed with her...
173 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
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About the author
Henry de Montherlant
224 books106 followersHenry de Montherlant (1895-1972) fut romancier, dramaturge, essayiste et poète. Il était membre de l’Académie française et peut être considéré comme un des plus grands écrivains du XXe siècle, à l’égal d’un Proust ou d’un Céline.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 9, 2013
This must be one of Montherlarlant´s worst books. In the preface, he confesses that he ripped out this "love story" from his much longer, and more political, 1932 novel The Sand Rose. However, disregard the garish cover and the suggestive title, there is very little love in this novel.
The translation, and perhaps even the book, has dated badly; the french military all speak in grating 1930s music-hall British soldiering slang. However it does convey a sense of european bungling of the "colonial question" in a lonely French Saharan outpost. Lieutenant Lucien Auligny, a rather mediocre offshoot from a military-minded family is shipped out to the Sahara in his domineering mother´s hope of furthering his career. He has no internal resources to fall on and is soon bored to tears and buys a fourteen or fifteen year old arab mistress with whom he never really manages to communicate, which is hardly surprising considering that he incapable of understanding himself. At the height of his increasingly dull obsession, he convinces himself of his enlightened empathy with the arab people but eventually finds out he has been a figure of mockery all along.
The novel is unsuccessful because we feel very little sympathy for the petty, bovine protagonist, the arabs are perfunctorily pencilled in and even Ramie, the young girl never really comes alive, plus the story makes us uncomfortably aware of Montherlant´s own pederast tendencies. The most interesting character, Pierre de Giscart, a childhood friend of Auligny, an artist, a compulsive and addicted womanizer makes a brief appearance, sees the hopelessness of the storyline and wisely exits the book. The story could belong to Somerset Maugham´s very early stories about young officers buried in farflung colonial outposts; it also hopelessly reminds one of Joseph Conrad´s superb psychological studies of outcasts living on the edges of crumbling colonial empires. Sadly, the author´s evident distate and lampooning of his main character hamstrings the novel from the start.
The translation, and perhaps even the book, has dated badly; the french military all speak in grating 1930s music-hall British soldiering slang. However it does convey a sense of european bungling of the "colonial question" in a lonely French Saharan outpost. Lieutenant Lucien Auligny, a rather mediocre offshoot from a military-minded family is shipped out to the Sahara in his domineering mother´s hope of furthering his career. He has no internal resources to fall on and is soon bored to tears and buys a fourteen or fifteen year old arab mistress with whom he never really manages to communicate, which is hardly surprising considering that he incapable of understanding himself. At the height of his increasingly dull obsession, he convinces himself of his enlightened empathy with the arab people but eventually finds out he has been a figure of mockery all along.
The novel is unsuccessful because we feel very little sympathy for the petty, bovine protagonist, the arabs are perfunctorily pencilled in and even Ramie, the young girl never really comes alive, plus the story makes us uncomfortably aware of Montherlant´s own pederast tendencies. The most interesting character, Pierre de Giscart, a childhood friend of Auligny, an artist, a compulsive and addicted womanizer makes a brief appearance, sees the hopelessness of the storyline and wisely exits the book. The story could belong to Somerset Maugham´s very early stories about young officers buried in farflung colonial outposts; it also hopelessly reminds one of Joseph Conrad´s superb psychological studies of outcasts living on the edges of crumbling colonial empires. Sadly, the author´s evident distate and lampooning of his main character hamstrings the novel from the start.
August 30, 2024
Il tenente Auligny è un ufficiale francese, che nel 1932, su pressione su pressione della madre, viene assegnato al comando di un bordj in Marocco, con la speranza di tornare in patria decorato. Se inizialmente veste i panni della patria e si emoziona di fronte al tricolore, ben presto la sua sensibilità lo porterà ad avvicinarsi alla questione coloniale per l’amore verso Ram, la sua «rosa del deserto», donna-bambina. E’ un romanzo storico sull’anticolonialismo, sviluppato all’interno di una storia d’amore; un testo con una difficile storia per la sua pubblicazione. L'ho trovato di difficile lettura sia perché è difficile accettare come siano stati trattati gli abitanti delle colonie dagli occupanti, sia perché nessuno dei personaggi mi ha conquistata i ho trovati tutti insulsi, noiosi e privi di personalità. Per questo ho assegnato due stelle. Non ne consiglio la lettura.
December 27, 2016
A short novel about a French officer stationed in Algeria and his obsession with an under-aged prostitute. I wonder how many 1950's housewives bought this book when it was published in English not realizing who the author was? Anyway, it was OK. Far from my favorite de Montherlant novel. It's almost like a prototype for "The Girls", with Guiscart being a bit of an early Costals.
October 24, 2012
Hübsch sieht's aus, das Buch und handelt von der Wüste.. Aber sonst: verklemmte Männerfantasien..
May 13, 2013
Gotta love the cover ... was ever a book more baldly mis-sold? Actually, the contents are typical HdM: astute, baleful, distorted.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews