For hundreds of years the vast territory of the Kalahari remained a blank on the map. Yet it gripped the imagination of poets, painters, writers, dreamers, adventurers and not a few charlatans. This book is a whimsical anthology of those who were inspired by this desert, those who lived in its bitter confines and those who died in its dry embrace. "Kalahari - what a beautiful word. It rolls off the tongue with satisfying ease, seeming to apply distance. A great wilderness of waving grasses, humming with grasshopper song under a hot wind and a sky of vibrant blue". - Rupert Isaacson, 'The Healing Land'. "But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity." - Andrew Marvell (1621-78). "Oh that the desert were my dwelling place, with only one fair spirit for my minister. That I might forget the human race, and hating no one, love her only." - Lord Byron. 160 b/w illustrations
