The Blue Men by J.G. Sandom
ISBN-10: ‎0997673931
Publisher: ‎Cornucopia Press (August 12, 2023)
Edition: 2nd
Language: ‎English
Print Length: ‎319 pages

(formerly The Travels of Thurston Powell)

Pale Fire meets Lawrence of Arabia

Published in the United States for the first time, J.G. Sandom’s debut novel is set in Algeria in the early 1980s, when Thurston Powell travels to the town of Tamanrasset in the heart of the Sahara ostensibly to study the poetry of the local Tuareg Berber tribes.

He meets a collection of political defectors, refugees, and smugglers, all of whom have lost faith in something — in love, in science, in the ability to effect political change, in God. Mistaken for a smuggler, Powell is drawn into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with the local police and with an Islamist fundamentalist smuggler named Mustafa, who is also Powell’s rival for the affections of the beautiful poetess Dassina. As each outlandish character struggles to regain their faith in that which they have lost, Powell begins to piece together his own life and heart, and to regain the most important sense of faith of all — his belief in himself.

Part journal featuring the incredible adventures of Thurston Powell as he caravans through the Sahara; part historico-anthropological examination of the Tuareg, a people who have controlled the oases of North Africa since the days of Herodotus and Pliny, and who once served as the shock troops for the Hilalian Moorish invaders that conquered Spain and brought the number zero, pharmacology, and astronomy to Europe; part ethno-poetical analysis of desert verse; and part elegy to the poetry of the famous Blue Men of the Desert (The Tuareg), this literary tour de force is also a paean to writing itself, and the faith required to create a world of fiction and the characters within.

Lastly, the book reveals the inner workings of a talented young writer who has since become an international bestselling author, and whose award-winning work has been listed “Top Ten” by The Washington Post, and celebrated in such journals as Kirkus, Hollywood Reporter, and Library Journal.

Like The Publicist, this black comedy is part of the Tuareg collection, books the author has written that feature the Berbers of the Sahara.

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