Hailed as a masterpiece when it was first published in France in 1977, The Desert tells the story of al-Mammi, a young exiled prince of a now-destroyed Jewish kingdom in southern Morocco in the late fourteenth century. Fighting battles in the service of kings, facing imprisonment, and narrowly escaping death, the prince travels the Islamic world absorbing lessons, often painfully, on how to govern himself, as well as a country. At the same time, al-Mammi engages on a spiritual journey to obtain inner wisdom rather than material riches.

Memmi chronicles the prince's fortunes as they rise and fall, drawing upon the traditions of Maghrebian storytelling and Arabian tales to offer a highly imaginative and allegorical novel that provocatively blends history with fiction.