A “compelling; relentless; visceral” thriller set in the teeming capital of Somalia from the author of The Reckoning and Rain Falls on Everyone (Damien Lewis, award-winning war reporter).
Peter Maguire has been kidnapped in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. He does not know where he is or what is going to happen to him. The journalist is filled with fear and, as the days go by, this dread of the unknown is shot through with remorse for the mistakes of his past. Peter’s mother Nina comes to Somalia to wait for her son’s release. His plight forces her to relive another trauma—the fatal shooting in Liberia of Shaun Ridge, a young photographer she once loved, and Peter’s real father.
Abdi, a Somali teenager working with Peter’s captors strikes a tenuous friendship with the prisoner based on a shared feeling of captivity. He decides to help Peter escape. Together they set off into the barren vastness of a land filled with danger. Three people must journey into one of the world’s most dangerous places, the human mind, to answer the question: are we ever truly free?
Clár provides access to the beating hearts on all sides of terror that even our best journalists can’t reach.”—Christopher Bollen, author of A Beautiful Crime
“This is a layered, textured, whole-hearted novel that will stay with me for a long time.”—Léan Cullinan, author of The Living
“A turbulent journey to the world’s most forgotten corners.”—Celeste Hicks, journalist and author of Africa’s New Oil
