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    The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
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    The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
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    The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
    Ebook638 pages9 hours

    The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

    By Michael Scott Moore

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    About this ebook

    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 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 28, 2019
    ISBN9780062968678
    Author

    Michael Scott Moore

    Michael Scott Moore is an accomplished author and journalist, a California native and a longtime resident of Berlin. His comic novel about L.A., Too Much of Nothing, was published in 2003, and Sweetness and Blood, a travel book about the spread of surfing to odd corners of the world, was named a book of the year by The Economist in 2010. Moore has written about politics, literature, and travel for The Atlantic, Der Spiegel, Pacific Standard, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

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    Reviews for The Desert and the Sea

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      So, so, so good!! Not only was it a compelling true adventure story and a great primer on how the situation in Somali came about, it was also an amazing look at the psychology of both captive and captor. Excellent!!
    • 4/5
      As the subtitle reveals, journalist Michael Scott Moore spent almost three years as a hostage held by Somali pirates. This book is his account of the uncertain, desperate, and at times violent days spent hiding out in dilapidated houses and on board a hijacked tuna fishing boat with an international crew of captives. Moore spends his time thinking about his rescue, escape and/or suicide, pondering spiritual issues, and remembering his fraught relationship with his deceased father. The impoverished pirates, who want 20 million dollars in ransom for their prized American hostage, are repeatedly disappointed when this kind of funding does not come through. Eventually, largely through the efforts of his indomitable German mother, he is freed. I chose to read this book because I heard the author interviewed on NPR. I enjoyed the interview more than the book, which is impressively written but at times captures the tedium and confusion of life as a hostage a little too well. Still, I recommend this book to those who like true stories of survival in difficult circumstances.