Desert and the Sea - 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

With echoes of Catch-22 and Black Hawk Down, author and former hostage Michael Scott Moore masterfully walks a fine line between personal narrative and journalistic distance in this page-turning and novelistic account of 977 days held captive by Somali pirates.
Moore set off for Somalia in January 2012 after reporting on a historic trial of ten Somali pirates in Germany. He went with an open mind and a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He knew the stories of poor fishermen whose livelihoods were threatened by international fishing vessels; he sympathized with the legacies of colonialism. Near the end of his trip, however, a gang of pirates captured him and demanded a ransom of twenty million dollars. Moore would be stuck in Somalia for more than two and a half years, shifted from camps in the desert bush to barren prison houses, and—for several months—he was held on a hijacked tuna vessel, where he would make friends with a crew of hostage fishermen.
As the only Western journalist to witness everyday life on a ship captured by Somali pirates, Moore recounts his dizzying ordeal as a rich and surprising story of survival. After a daring but desperate attempt to escape, he struggles with murderous fantasies as well as thoughts of suicide. Some of his guards—happy to have an American to taunt—suggest his long captivity is payback for the Battle of Mogadishu, the basis for the book Black Hawk Down, more than two decades before.
In the face of threats to kill him, or sell him to al-Shabaab, Moore maintains his humanity and his sardonic wit. He relates his captivity with calm detachment, brilliantly weaving his own experience as a hostage with the religious and political factors behind Somali piracy. His wide-ranging narrative brings us into the destitute lives of his guards, as well as memories of his father’s self-destruction. The Desert and the Sea falls at the intersection of reportage, memoir, and history, and it will take its place next to titles such as An Evil Cradling and Even Silence Has an End.

About the author

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.

Summary

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.

Additional text

“Not only the definitive book on Somali pirates, but a remarkable work of literature too.”

Product details

• Authors: Michael Scott Moore
• Publisher: Harper Collins Uk
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.07.2018
• EAN: 9780062449177
• ISBN: 978-0-06-244917-7
• No. of pages: 464
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Biographies, autobiographies; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Personal Memoirs, POLITICAL SCIENCE: INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SCIENCE, POLITICAL SCIENCE: Human Rights, AFRICAN STUDIES: HISTORY, HISTORY: AFRICA, HISTORY: Africa / East