Sahara (1982)
Sahara is a 1982 contaminación book written by Clive Cussler.
Dirk Pitt is Clive Cussler's answer to Indiana Jones with a diving tank, a marine engineer who reads the world's oceans and deserts as one enormous treasure map. Here he chases a plague spreading out of West Africa, a toxin poisoning the sea, and two buried mysteries at once: a vanished Confederate ironclad and the last flight of a lost aviatrix. The trail runs from the Nile to a slave-worked gold mine deep in the Sahara, past a billionaire industrialist and a warlord. Cussler writes for pace and spectacle, and Sahara delivers both by the truckload.
Quick answers
What is Sahara about?
Dirk Pitt is Clive Cussler's answer to Indiana Jones with a diving tank, a marine engineer who reads the world's oceans and deserts as one enormous treasure map. Here he chases a plague spreading out of West Africa, a toxin poisoning the sea, and two buried mysteries at once: a vanished Confederate ironclad and the last flight of a lost aviatrix. The trail runs from the Nile to a slave-worked gold mine deep in the Sahara, past a billionaire industrialist and a warlord. Cussler writes for pace and spectacle, and Sahara delivers both by the truckload.
When was Sahara published?
Sahara was published in 1982.
Who made Sahara?
Sahara was written by Clive Cussler.
Explore Sahara guides
Sahara in our writing
- Companion guide: Lost Civilizations
- Companion guide: Treasure Hunts & Adventure
A few thoughts on Sahara
Pitt's globe-trotting Treasure Hunts & Adventure translate best to screen and controller. The 2005 film Sahara hands Matthew McConaughey the role for exactly this desert chase, and the Uncharted games put you behind a wisecracking adventurer raiding lost sites for the same pulpy rush. Both keep Clive Cussler's engine running: history, danger, and a grin.
Treasure hunters who treat the whole world as a map
Dirk Pitt treats his marine-engineer toolkit like a passport into danger, chasing a lost ironclad and a vanished flyer past a warlord and an industrialist. Nathan Drake chases the same kind of prize in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Largo Winch turns a corporate empire into cover for globe-hopping schemes, Made in Abyss sends explorers into a hole nobody returns from unchanged, and Captain Harlock roams for something worth the risk.
Big-budget action movies that chase treasure across continents
Sahara has already been to the multiplex once, its Nile-to-desert chase turned into the 2005 film with Matthew McConaughey. That same appetite for globe-trotting stunts runs through xXx and xXx: Return of Xander Cage, where extreme athletes double as spies, and The Sum of All Fears, where one analyst races to stop a catastrophe before the map runs out of time.
Adventure stories that race against a hidden countdown
Sahara keeps its heroes moving against a deadline: a spreading plague, a hidden gold mine, secrets nobody wants found. Scorpia sends teenage spy Alex Rider up against an organization with its own countdown, Jurassic Park turns a tour of dinosaurs into a fight for survival, Citadel drops trained agents into a conspiracy racing toward them, and Mr. Robot follows a hacker pulled into a plot bigger than he understands.