‘The desert is a space in which people discover themselves,’ says the author Bahaa Taher, and the desert is where his novel Sunset Oasis is set, in the last years of the 19th century.

It depicts the life of a middle-aged government official, Mahmoud Abd el Zahir, who is sent by his British superiors to govern the oasis of Siwa as a punishment for his involvement in the failed Urabi revolt in 1882.