A one-word description of this book might be "overwrought." On the one hand, it is the romance to end all romances, but on the other hand, it is also a story of religious ecstasy in the context of Catholic faith. At some point, the romantic and religious rapture seem to merge, and in the end one is destroyed by the other. The reader is carried away by all this euphoria through an environment of living, breathing and loving the northern Sahara desert, descriptions of which are almost as infinite as the Sahara itself.

It is small wonder that The Garden of Allah was used by Hollywood not once, but three times as the basis for a desert romance, the most recent in 1936 starring Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer, with Basil Rathbone thrown in for good measure. The movie pales by comparison to the book. It doesn't begin to convey the intensity of emotion found on the printed page. And it turns the plot upside down and in so doing loses significant elements of drama that lead to an actual climax in the book that is entirely missing in the film.

To be sure The Garden of Allah is a product of its time. According to Yesterday's Bestsellers: A Journey through Literary History by Brian Stableford (1998), it is very much in the vein of Marie Corelli's fiction which was very popular at the turn of the last century. She too managed to turn romantic love into a religious experience when elements of the occult and religious fervor were almost commonplace in some types of fiction.

The central figure of the novel — as opposed to the movie — is a thirtyish aristocratic Englishwoman, aptly named Domini, whose life has been quite sheltered in spite of her age and wealth. She embarks on a voyage of self-discovery which takes her to the Algerian desert. On her way to Beni-Mara, an oasis where the railroad line ends and the northern edge of the desert begins, she encounters a boorish man named Boris who seems to lack the most basic manners. They end up at the same hotel and every time they meet in passing, he repeatedly manifests such rudeness that she comes to believe his is a destructive personality.

Inexplicably — and I mean it: it is never explained, at all — Domini and Boris get married against the better judgment of the local priest, a friendly Italian count who has seen Boris in action and, of course, a native sand diviner who has foretold Domini's future with forbidding overtones. Directly after the wedding, the two lovebirds embark on a voyage into the desert, complete with sandstorm, camel caravan, Arab retainers, boundless dunes and mirages. This desert honeymoon symbolizes the self-discovery that continues for both Domini and Boris and becomes a rite of passage that takes an unforeseen turn and results in an ending that could not have been predicted early on. Domini sets out in search of freedom and truth, and as the novel progresses it becomes more and more apparent that Boris's own search for freedom is blocked by a lack of truth.

Modern readers don't seem to care for the seemingly unending descriptions — in this case of love, religion, the desert — but I cannot help admiring Hichens' ability to use style, syntax and sentence structure to convey the buildup to a climax — most notably the passages describing their love on the wedding night. Remember, this is 1904, and the word "sex" appears nowhere in the 490 pages of this book. At the outset, I appreciated especially the picture of the desert community of Beni-Mara (based on the oasis town of Biskra in Algeria), the native denizens, and the beauty of the desert itself and its surrounding mountains. But as the novel wore on, even I began to tire of what began to seem like a repetitious overexposure of the protagonists, their love and their religion, but the desert never completely lost its magic. ( )

Not nearly as good as "December Love" by the same author. So wordy that you have to skim. A good story is buried into all the unnecessary prose and endless descriptions of the desert. Not really worth reading. ( )