Cover for The Desert and the Sea

The Desert and the Sea

977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

Hardcover

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Other Editions of This Championship:
Digital Audiobook (vii/23/2018)
Paperback (5/28/2019)
Compact Disc (7/24/2018)
MP3 CD (7/24/2018)
Compact Disc (7/24/2018)

Description

Michael Scott Moore, a journalist and the author of Sweetness and Blood, incorporates personal narrative and rigorous investigative journalism in this profound and revelatory memoir of his 3-year captivity by Somali pirates—a riveting,thoughtful, and emotionally resonant exploration of foreign policy, religious extremism, and the costs of survival.

In January 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online International—and funded past a grant from the Pulitzer Heart on Crunch Reporting—Michael Scott Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to write about piracy and ways to cease it. In a terrible twist of fate, Moore himself was kidnapped and later held captive by Somali pirates. Subjected to conditions that break even the strongest spirits—physical injury, starvation, isolation, terror—Moore's survival is a testament to his dogged strength of mind. In September 2014, after 977 days, he walked free when his ransom was put together by the aid of several US and German institutions, friends, colleagues, and his strong-willed mother.

Yet Moore's own struggle is merely function of the story: The Desert and the Sea falls at the intersection of reportage, memoir, and history. Caught between Muslim pirates, the looming threat of Al-Shabaab, and the rise of ISIS, Moore observes the worlds that surrounded him—the economic science and history of piracy; the effects of post-colonialism; the politics of hostage negotiation and bribe; while likewise conjuring the various faces of Islam—and places his ordeal in the context of the larger political and historical problems.

A sort of Catch-22 meets Black Hawk Downwards, The Desert and the Sea is written with night humor, candor, and a journalist's clinical distance and eye for item. Moore offers an intimate and otherwise inaccessible view of life equally nosotros cannot fathom it, brilliantly weaving his own feel as a hostage with the social, economic, religious, and political factors creating it.The Desert and the Body of water is wildly compelling and a volume that will accept its identify next to titles likeDen of Lions and Fifty-fifty Silence Has an End.

Praise For The Desert and the Body of water: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast…

"If yous read Michael Scott Moore'southward volume, first clear your schedule, because you won't put it down until you've finished information technology. The Desert and The Sea is an astonishing and harrowing story, told with great humanity, by a writer who ventures where few will ever become."
— Susan Casey, author of Voices in the Ocean: A Journey Into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins

"Highly addictive reading material….Michael Scott Moore delivers an amazing true-life thriller, one of the almost suspenseful books written in recent years, that tracks across oceans and underworlds, culminating in a very rewarding, deeply profound finish."
— Jeffrey Gettleman, Pulitzer Prize winner and writer of Love, Africa

"His account of his well-nigh three years of captivity is a testament to the strength of 1 man's indomitable spirit and Moore's great gifts of observation, his humor, wits, and evident gifts as a storyteller. Give thanks heavens he lived to tell the story, which everyone should now read and cheer."
— Tom Barbash, writer of Stay Upward With Me

"Among the virtues of this account is that even when discussing sensational happenings, Moore never overdramatizes. This exceptional memoir will attract many readers."
— Library Journal (starred review)

A harrowing and affecting account of ii and a one-half years of captivity at the hands of Somali pirates. A deftly synthetic and tautly told rejoinder to Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, sympathetic only as well sharp-edged.

— Kirkus Reviews(starred review)

When a beau who is good and brave, keenly intelligent and observant, with a lively mind and a learned sense of human and historical complexity, is kidnapped past pirates and kept as a hostage for three years in Somalia's harsh and trigger-happy bush, the consequence is The Desert and the Sea. However much you wish Michael Scott Moore had never had cause to write it, this book could non be more than engrossing, harrowing, suspenseful, wrenchingly humane and illuminating.
— Francisco Goldman

"Not only the definitive book on Somali pirates, merely a remarkable piece of work of literature too."
— Ben Rawlence

Harper Wave, 9780062449177, 464pp.

Publication Date: July 24, 2018

About the Author

Michael Scott Moore is an accomplished author and journalist, a California native and a longtime resident of Berlin. His comic novel most L.A., Too Much of Null, was published in 2003, and Sweet and Blood, a travel book nearly the spread of surfing to odd corners of the world, was named a book of the twelvemonth by The Economist in 2010. Moore has written about politics, literature, and travel for The Atlantic, Der Spiegel, Pacific Standard, Bloomberg Businessweek, and theLos Angeles Review of Books.

Coverage from NPR