Zoraida: A Romance of the Harem and the Great Sahara
1895
The Sahara is not a place. It is a crucible. In William Le Queux's transporting 1895 adventure, Englishmen venture into the golden death of the desert and return transformed, or not at all. Cecil Holcombe crosses the trackless waste seeking a caravan to Touat, only to be gutted by marauders and left for the sun's mercy. He survives, barely, and is taken in by the merchant Ali Ben Hafiz who warns him of a woman whose fate will entangle his own: the mysterious Zoraida. She is dangerous. She is beautiful. She is the key to everything that follows. When Zoraida falls into deadly peril facing trial and possible execution at the hands of French colonists, Holcombe must race against time and navigate the treacherous waters of colonial politics to save her. This is adventure fiction at its fin de siècle finest: a tale of survival, obsession, and the terrible beauty of worlds where East meets West and the desert judges all who enter.
