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Published Jul 2018
464 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
Michael Scott Moore incorporates personal narrative and rigorous investigative journalism in this profound and revelatory memoir of his three-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 by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting - Michael Scott Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to write about piracy and ways to end it. In a terrible twist of fate, Moore himself was kidnapped and subsequently 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 indomitable strength of mind. In September 2014, after 977 days, he walked free when his ransom was put together by the help of several US and German institutions, friends, colleagues, and his strong-willed mother.
Yet Moore's own struggle is only part 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 economics and history of piracy; the effects of post-colonialism; the politics of hostage negotiation and ransom; while also conjuring the various faces of Islam - and places his ordeal in the context of the larger political and historical issues.
A sort of Catch-22 meets Black Hawk Down, The Desert and the Sea is written with dark humor, candor and a journalist's clinical distance and eye for detail. Moore offers an intimate and otherwise inaccessible view of life as we cannot fathom it, brilliantly weaving his own experience as a hostage with the social, economic, religious, and political factors creating it. The Desert and the Sea is wildly compelling and a book that will take its place next to titles like Den of Lions and Even Silence Has an End.
"Starred Review. A fascinating page-turner...Moore's honest writing will speak to readers. Having faced an experience no one ever should, Moore constructs a narrative that makes readers' heart beat faster." - Booklist
"Starred Review. A deftly constructed and tautly told rejoinder to Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, sympathetic but also sharp-edged." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. 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
"If you read Michael Scott Moore's book, first clear your schedule, because you won't put it down until you've finished it. The Desert and The Sea is an astonishing and harrowing story, told with great humanity, by a writer who ventures where few will ever go." - 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 most suspenseful books written in recent years, that tracks across oceans and underworlds, culminating in a very rewarding, deeply profound end." - Jeffrey Gettleman, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Love, Africa
"His account of his nearly three years of captivity is a testament to the strength of one man's indomitable spirit and Moore's great gifts of observation, his humor, wits, and evident gifts as a storyteller. Thank heavens he lived to tell the story, which everyone should now read and cheer." - Tom Barbash, author of Stay Up With Me
This information about The Desert and the Sea was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Michael Scott Moore is a novelist and journalist who has written on politics and travel for publications such as the Atlantic, Slate, Spiegel online, Miller-McCune magazine, Business Week, and the Financial Times. He currently lives in Berlin, Germany, but he is moving back to Southern California before publication.
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