The Desert and the Sea

Starred review from June 1, 2018

This intense, often claustrophobic memoir relates journalist Moore's 977 days as a captive of Somali pirates. The author traveled to Somalia hoping to write an article paralleling the country's present situation with 17th-century America, where colonists sometimes found work as pirates. But events went sour from the start. Moore never felt safe, even with his hosts. Later, he became convinced these same hosts betrayed him into the hands of the pirates. The author leavens the description of his harrowing experience by writing of other topics: his captors' religious beliefs, which divided people into believers and "those for whom we don't cry"; the radical mood swings he underwent and why they never led to thoughts of suicide; his troubled relationship with a father whose suicide shaped his own life. Among the virtues of this account is that even when discussing sensational happenings, Moore never overdramatizes. VERDICT This exceptional memoir will attract many readers.--David Keymer, Cleveland

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Starred review from June 1, 2018
A harrowing and affecting account of two and a half years of captivity at the hands of Somali pirates."It's hard to write one adventurous book without thinking about another," writes Moore early on, recounting his quest, recounted in Sweetness and Blood (2010), to document how the American fascination with surfing had spread into other parts of the world. Americans and the rest of the world were then fascinated with the pirates making news by marauding off the Horn of Africa, and so the author traveled to witness them firsthand. "The rise of modern pirates buzzing off Somalia was an example of entropy in my lifetime," he writes, "and it seemed important to know why there were pirates at all." He quickly learned. Taken captive, Moore learned lessons in the sociology, economics, and psychology of piracy while at the same time enduring some terrible treatment--some of it for show, some of it quite in earnest--as his captors tried to convince his poor mother, and then whomever would listen, to come up with $20 million for his freedom. There's plenty of gallows humor as Moore settles in for his long spell of unhappiness. When his young captors, "stoned on narcotic cud," blast music from their cellphones, he asks a senior to get them to turn it down. "They're soldiers," he's told by way of explanation, to which he replies, "ask them to be quiet soldiers." Imprisoned among a score or so of other captives, mostly Chinese and Filipino, the author discerned that many Somalis turn to piracy for lack of other opportunities, but while "each pirate was here to steal my money," few were eager to cause him personal harm. Moore's humane consideration of his captors reflects some of the small kindnesses he was shown, but it also contrasts with the indifference of Western officials who, it seems, would sooner have sent in the bombers than pay the ransom.A deftly constructed and tautly told rejoinder to Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, sympathetic but also sharp-edged.

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Starred review from June 1, 2018
Moore's account of his captivity in Somalia is a fascinating page-turner. A Berlin-based writer, Moore traveled to Somalia in 2012 on a grant for crisis reporting and hired a guide to facilitate a meeting with pirates. Incredibly, pirates kidnapped him on the trip, believing him to be able to pay a 20-million-dollar ransom and obtain letters of exoneration from President Obama. After three years, his mother paid a lesser ransom and Moore was freed. Enduring conditions that could make any person suicidal, Moore reflects on his father's death, which he long believed to be caused by a heart attack but was in fact a suicide. Moore's honest writing will speak to readers; he is candid about his feelings, his mistakes, Somalia, his conditions, and his pirates. He walks the tightrope of inviting readers to have empathy for pirates whose national history includes brutal colonialism while demonstrating the pirates' capacity for torture. Moore also invites us to learn about him, as he himself does, during these three years that will forever mark him. Having faced an experience no one ever should, Moore constructs a narrative that makes readers' hearts beat faster and with purpose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)