Le Clézio's Désert joins that very limited number of contemporary French fictions that deal in a significant way with the relations between France and her former North African colonies. His first novel since Voyages de l'autre cote (1975), it represents a major addition to his already impressive literary production and is quite possibly his most esthetically satisfying achievement to date. The prolixity of his style has been reduced, and there remain virtually none of the self-consciously ingenuous passages that have previously marred some of his finest pages. (pp. 898-99)

Trois Villes saintes, published simultaneously with Désert, resembles the author's earlier Haï in being a lyrical meditation on certain aspects of various native cultures of the Americas. (p. 899)

Désert and Trois Villes saintes both provide striking new illustrations of many of the themes that have long characterized Le Clézio's writings: the contrast between modern civilization, with its dehumanizing and enslaving artifices, and those societies that are in closer accord with the natural order; silence and solitude, in both their positive and negative aspects; waiting, watching, and the mystical power of "le regard"; "la parole" and the evocative poetry of names; liberty and the rebellion by which it might be achieved. (p. 900)