Word: deserted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Perhaps because its sun-blasted emptiness is so different from their cozily crowded, fog-shrouded island, the trackless desert has always attracted Englishmen. A straight line leads from Sir Richard Burton crossing the Arabian desert in 1853 and Lawrence of Arabia down to Geoffrey Moorhouse. Burton had a simple thirst for the exotic. Lawrence was a complex mystic. Moorhouse, who left Nouakchott, Mauritania, in October of 1972 heading east into the Sahara, is a fortyish ex-journalist. In challenging the desert, he was intent on confronting his own fears and what he took to be personal cowardice...
...matter-of-fact style, Moorhouse tells what it is like to cope with temperatures that soar past 130° by day and drop below freezing at night. He describes the stunning beauty of desert sunsets and the soporific, swaying movement of the camel. He can make a reader comfortably fixed with a Scotch in his hand share the blessed glee of finding brackish water dotted with camel dung that is worth more than gold or oil in a sea of sand...
...Fearful Void is a valuable addition to the literature of the desert, and a useful reference for anyone who may be considering a similar exercise in masochism. But it also chronicles a voyage of the spirit. With painful, plodding honesty, Moorhouse examines his insular intolerance of strange customs and his lack of confidence in his ability to evaluate his guides and companions along the way. He confronts the colossal reluctance he felt at having to haul himself into the saddle each morning for another day of pain. Thirst reduced him to almost incoherent terror. Every chance encounter - whether with...
...days a persistent gentleman named Moses had a vision. In concert with the Lord, Moses bargained with the Pharoah and led the Israelites out of Egypt. But he ran into some difficulties in the desert. The Hebrews did not have enough time to stock up on provisions and Moses was at a loss as to how to feed them. But lo and behold, manna fell from heaven...
...first to desert the Lutheran fold was the Rev. Wilhelm Schwenold, 46, bachelor pastor of a parish of 600 souls in Bernsbach, southwest of Nürnberg, who slipped out of town one night last fall and sent a letter of resignation to his bishop on Reformation Day. Next to go was the assistant pastor at Würzburg's Deutschhaus church, the Rev. Karl-Heinz Tillmann, 39, married and the father of three. But the final and most embarrassing blow came last month with the resignation of the Rev. Gerhard Betzner, the popular pastor of the church...