Between Terror and Tourism

For his 65th birthday acclaimed novelist Michael Mewshaw took a 4000mile overland trip across North Africa. Arriving in Egypt during food riots he heads west into Libya where billions in oil money have produced little except citizens eager to flee to Europe or join the jihad in Iraq. In Tunis Mewshaw visits an abandoned Star Wars movie set where Al Qaeda has just kidnapped two tourists.. Ignoring U.S. Embassy warnings he crosses into Algeria traveling through mountain towns and seething metropolises where 200000 people have died during more than a decade of sectarian violence. Searching for the tombs of seven monks murdered by Islamic fundamentalists he reaches a village where six more people have been beheaded the day before. When he interviews a repentant terrorist responsible for 5000 deaths the man praises the Boy Scouts for training him.. By contrast the Moroccan city of Tangier seems almost tame. But then he meets the last literary protg of Paul Bowles who accuses Bowles of plagiarism and murder. In the end the reader like the author is immersed in a fascinating adventure that''s sometimes tragic often funny occasionally terrifying and always a revelation of a strange place and its people.