A Passion in the Desert reflects a number of interests Balzac shared with the French public in the days of romanticism. The tale is set in the desert of North Africa, a region that had loomed large in the French imagination since the time of the Crusades. Painters, poets, and novelists all strove to satisfy the public's interest about the area, and it was characteristic of Balzac that he did not let the fact he had never been to North Africa stop him from setting his story there and from imaginatively evoking the loneliness of the desert with great feeling.