Each year the harmattan wind blows sand from the Sahara Desert into the skies throughout West Africa. In the midst of such a wind, suddenly things are not what they were. For Marcello Di Cintio, the harmattan wind captures the essence of his ten-month journey through Ghana, Togo, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania, a journey that is as much about what he discovers within himself as it is about the lands of people of West Africa.

Over the past twenty years, Marcello Di Cintio has built a career as one of Canada’s most insightful and incisive nonfiction authors, earning prizes along the way that include the Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize, as well as nominations for the Taylor Prize for Nonfiction and the British Columbia National Award for Non-Fiction.

Di Cintio’s essays have been published in the Walrus, Canadian Geographic, the Globe and Mail, the Times Literary Supplement, the International New York Times, Condé Nast Traveller, EnRoute, and Swerve. He is also the author of six books, including Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in Present Tense, Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, and Poets and Pahlevans: A Journey into the Heart of Iran. He lives in Calgary.

Marcello Di Cintio's profile page