There aren't many books published in our country about the world's greatest desert. The works of French researchers R. Caporay and A. Lot were translated, a collection of articles "Garamantida (African Atlantis)" was published, essays appeared in regional studies publications and journals. This is why the publication of A. B. Podtserob "The Boundless Expanses of the Sahara" (Moscow, Byblos Consulting, 2010, 191 pages), which tells about the past and present of the Sahara, can be considered a notable event. The book also includes travel essays by the author, who during the 20 years he spent in North Africa, repeatedly traveled through the Great Desert, leaving on dirt roads and off-road for many hundreds of kilometers from the oases. In December 2005, he led a group of Russians who reached the center of the most inaccessible region of the Sahara - Erga Murzuk.

The monograph is preceded by a foreword by the Director of the Institute of Africa, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences A. M. Vasiliev, who describes it as not just a scientific, but a scientific and artistic work. The book is accompanied by a DVD with N. A. Sologubovsky's film "Louvre under the Open Sky", which is the first Russian documentary about rock art in the Libyan Sahara.

The first two and last two chapters, as if framing the monograph, describe the author's trips to the lakes hidden in the giant dunes of Erg Al-Zallaf, to the lost world of the Great Desert, located in the crater of the ancient volcano Wau al-Namus, through the Great Eastern Erg and through Murzuk. The remaining chapters are arranged in chronological and thematic order.

One of them deals with the peoples who once inhabited the Sahara and the tens of thousands of petroglyphs and rock paintings that they left behind, which form a thread connecting us with people who lived many thousands of years ago. The book details two "open-air museums" located in Libya - in the Akakus mountain range and in Wadi Mathandoush. Their description is all the more interesting because, unlike the rock art of the Algerian Tassili-Algeria, the frescoes and petroglyphs of Fezzan are not so widely known.

The monograph tells about the mysterious Garamantid-a state that emerged in ancient times in the Central Sahara and existed for a millennium and a half. The work describes the appearance of the Garamantes there, whose caravans connected the Mediterranean coast with Western Sudan, sketches their life, and tells about the death of their kingdom. This chapter is all the more interesting because it deals with little-explored pages in the history of the Sahara. Suffice it to say that the inscriptions made in the Garamantes language have not yet been deciphered, and we draw information about this people from the works of Greek and Roman authors. It is also valuable that the chapter on Garamantid overlays information from scientific research with the author's personal impressions.

The work also describes the connection with the Great Desert of the Romans, whose starting point was Leptis Magna , a huge city located on the Mediterranean coast. Its cyclopean buildings make an unforgettable impression even on us-people of the XXI century.

A separate chapter is devoted to the exploration of the Sahara, which was discovered three times - in the Ancient period, in the Middle Ages and in modern times. At the same time, the author does not ignore the contribution of Russian travelers V. V. Yunker and A.V. Eliseev to the study of the Great Desert.

The book also tells about the epic of General F. Leclerc, who led the "L" Unit of Free France, which fought across the Sahara from Chad to Tripoli, and then fought in the deserts of Tunisia. One of the positive aspects of this chapter is that the author does not limit himself to describing the actions of the brigade

F. Leclerc, and shows them in conjunction with the operations of the British 8th and German-Italian African armies and with the raids of the British Long-range Desert groups, as well as with the attempts of the German Tropical company from the special forces "Brandenburg-800" to penetrate from Italian Libya to French Equatorial Africa. Of interest is the author's conclusion that the stubborn defense of Bir Hakim by the 1st Free French Brigade, and later the victory won by Compound " L " at Ksar Gilan, played the role of pebbles that cause avalanches: Bir Hakim became the prologue to the defeat of Field Marshal E. Rommel at El Alamein, and Ksar Gilan allowed the Allies to to outflank the Mareth Line, which predetermined the defeat of the fascist troops in Tunisia. At the same time, the monograph would only benefit if it paid more attention to the participation of Russians in the fighting in North Africa.

One of the chapters deals with the construction of a Great artificial River in Libya, through which water from giant underground lakes located in the center of the Sahara is transferred to the Mediterranean coast. The author clearly shows how much effort was required to implement this largest (in terms of volume of work) project of the XX century.

Two more chapters are devoted to the people of the desert-the Tuaregs, whom A. B. Podtserob calls "the lords of boundless spaces", and the inhabitants of oases, whose life is described on the examples of the Egyptian Siwa, the Algerian Mzab and the Tunisian Tozer.

Speaking about the Tuaregs, the author rightly notes that their society is not primitive, that they founded cities, created state formations, and used their own alphabet. It convincingly shows how colonial conquests, state borders, and then the emergence of a modern economy put an end to the traditional Tuareg way of life.

Describing the oases, the author shows how important it is for their inhabitants to cultivate palm trees, which provide people with dates - the main agricultural crop of the Sahara. In addition to dates, the palm tree provides wood, its leaves are laid on the roofs of huts, mats, baskets, hats are woven from them. In the shade of palm trees that protect the land from the scorching sun, fruit trees and vegetables are grown in oases.

For the convenience of the reader, the book is provided with a dictionary of Arabic and Berber terms.

The monograph is written in good language, easy to read and interesting. Opening it, the reader is immersed in a special world - a world where a person feels like he is on another planet, in another dimension, where silent sand and stones, ergs and hamads, sarirs and wadis stretch for thousands of kilometers, where the sun and wind dominate the vast expanses, where the distance traveled is calculated not in kilometers, but in time. paths. This, the author writes, is a world where the traveler finds himself one-on-one not just with nature, but with infinity, with space, where the traces left by peoples who once lived make you physically feel the course of thousands of years, inexorably carrying tribes, kingdoms, cultures, civilizations into oblivion. The book reflects the fascinating beauty of the Sahrawi landscape, the splendor of sunrises and sunsets, the infinity of the low-hanging sky studded with large stars.

At the same time, I have to make some critical comments. It would be desirable to elaborate on the various points of view regarding the dating of climatic epochs and the periodization of Sahrawi rock art styles. In describing the construction of the Great Artificial River, it is necessary to cite and - if necessary - refute the often expressed opinion that this project was not sufficiently justified economically and is also capable of negatively affecting the water balance of the entire North Africa. In the book, the epigraphs to chapters III and XII are not highlighted by Petit (as is usually done). Finally, there are annoying typos.

All these secondary remarks do not change the main point: the monograph is an original study that combines the author's knowledge of the problem under consideration, erudition and depth of analysis. The book allows Russians to get acquainted with the Sahara, " worthy, as A. M. Vasiliev notes in the preface to the work, of the attention that scientists, politicians, businessmen, and travelers have paid to it." With the publication of the study, this opportunity was given to both orientalist scientists and a wide range of readers.

During the time that has passed since the book's release, its author has made another fascinating trip to the Libyan Sahara, visiting the little-explored mountain ranges of Uweinat and Arkyanu, located at the junction of the borders of Libya with Egypt and Sudan. We can only wish A. B. Podtserob to continue working on the Sahrawi theme and publish new articles and monographs.

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