Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize – Salt

The following essay was shortlisted for the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize. It follows the publication of the winning entry, by Tara Isabella Burton, and the runner-up, by Steven McGregor. The remaining shortlist entries will appear on the website in the coming days.

I knew next to nothing about the desert – nothing about its geology, its geography, the kind of people who lived here. We’d stretched out in bed in Glasgow and you’d said what about the desert and we were here now. You’d said what about the Grand Canyon? That was somewhere around here – that pink and purple vein – and so was the Joshua Tree – that old thing that looked like a pile of hair blowing in the wind. We’d stretched out in bed and you said you wanted to go to Death Canyon – you thought the name was ironic – to keep the tourists away. We drove through the no man’s land, the Mojave Desert, and I knew that name wasn’t ironic.