Sanmao

“When I first arrived in the desert, I desperately wanted to be the first female explorer to cross the Sahara.” That terrific lede is the opening line of a collection of travel essays that has given rise to more journeys, both imagined and real, than anyone could possibly count. Stories of the Sahara is the collected work of a Chinese-born Taiwanese woman who wrote under the pen name Sanmao, though she was often called Echo in the English-speaking world. Inspired by stories she read in National Geographic as a child that depicted the Sahara’s alien landscape, Sanmao left what she saw as a culturally repressive Taiwan and struck out to see the world. She eventually traveled to more than fifty-five countries, learned to speak multiple languages, and wrote voluminously, her words providing an escape for readers back home who couldn’t hope to leave themselves.

Born Chen Mao-ping on March 26, 1943, in the bustling wartime capital of Chongqing, Sanmao would later go simply