Small Place in the Desert

A Small Place in the Desert, Christopher New brings to North Africa the same historical perspicacity his earlier novels brings to South Asia and to the China coast. Summer is ending when retired schoolteachers Peter Saunders and his wife Clare arrive in Cairo to begin their guided tour of Egypt. Fifty years earlier, during the Muslim Brotherhood's terrorist campaign to expel the british, Peter has served in Egypt as a young British officer. For him, this is a trip to a haunted past. For Clare, who is on her trip to the desert, this is a chance to help Peter exorcise that past, and to learn something of a life and love her husband has always kept from her. Along the way, the elderly british couple crosses paths repeatedly with an American pair, ingenuous college students exuberantly in love and on their first visit to the Old World. With their blithe insensitivity, the younger couple leave behind a trail of anger and resentment. Tensions mount to an unsettling climax in the lakeside city of Ismailia. There, Peter must engage and try to overcome his darkest memories. Clare will discover at last what happened fifty years ago that so shadowed his life. And the young Americans will make their own discovery. It is September 11th, 2001. A many-layered novel subtly balancing past and present, A Small Place in the Desert is at once a striking portrayal of self-discovery, love and loss, and an allusive and timely depiction of the troubled interface between the Western and the Muslim worlds. Christopher New is also the author of The Road to Maridur and of the three titles in The China Coast Trilogy - Shanghai, The Chinese Box, A Change of Flag.New, Christopher is the author of 'Small Place in the Desert' with ISBN 9789628783342 and ISBN 9628783343.