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FARMINGTON – Acclaimed author Michael Mewshaw will appear at Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers to hold a reading and book signing on Saturday, March 27, at 4 p.m.
In Between Terror and Tourism, acclaimed novelist Michael Mewshaw details the 4,000-mile overland trip across North Africa that he took for his 65th birthday. 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.
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Ignoring U.S. Embassy warnings he crosses into Algeria, traveling through mountain towns and seething metropolises where 200,000 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 5,000 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 protégé 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.
Praise for Between Terror and Tourism
“Michael Mewshaw has the nerve to go where he isn’t wanted and the literary talent to take us along with him, at least in imagination. His eye-opening trip through Islamic North Africa is a journey every American should take, and I’m grateful to Mewshaw for letting me do so without ever leaving my chair.”
– Barbara Ehrenreich
“Michael Mewshaw writes with a fluency, a spirited calm and an irresistible hunger for the world that seem to issue from a vanished age. And he takes us here into Algeria and Libya and places that we almost never get to read about. If only all travelers were so “fearless, so literate, so funny and so wise!”
– Pico Iyer
“Michael Mewshaw takes the reader on a journey most can only dream of. He scares, thrills and informs on his gritty tale of solo travel through a region little understood by the outside world. His hilarious accounts of his quixotic experiences underplay the dangers he faces. If you want to feel the warmth of the Mediterranean sun, the chill of north African rain and the bumps in the road this is the book to read. Mewshaw is one of the finest travel writers of our time.”
– Nic Robertson, CNN
About the Author
In addition to novels set in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt, Michael Mewshaw has written hundreds of travel articles for publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lived and traveled extensively in North Africa. He spends the winter in Key West, Florida, and travels the rest of the year.
For more information regarding this event contact DDG Booksellers, 193 Broadway, Farmington, Me 04938 at 778-3454, or by email at info@ddgbooks.com.
