Land Between the Rivers is the result of ten years of research, writing, and thinking about the subject. It is an enormous topic: five thousand years, beginning with Gilgamesh at the edge of historical time. It is a big topic in another way. More than anywhere else, the famous Land Between the Rivers, where civilization was born, where East and West have mixed and clashed since long before Alexander, has led an existence that could be called, from a certain perspective, a history of the world.
We begin the story with ancient Sumer, and Gilgamesh building the walls of Uruk ('Iraq') to make a great name for himself around the turn of the third millennium BC. We end it in 1958, as the last royal family of Iraq is slaughtered on the steps of a small royal palace in Baghdad, the most effervescent, free, and promising capital in the Middle East.
Above all, the story of Iraq, the world's hinge country, is that of the great clash pitting humanism against the outlooks of power and fate.
The Great War has ended, tragically for many; but for some more fortunate, East Africa holds the prospect of vast estates, fabulous wealth, and limitless opportunity in this powerful, grandly crafted novel of the natural and human perils that await pioneers in a promised land.It is in colonial Kenya, at Lord Penfold's White Rhino Hotel, that the paths of these new settlers cross. Here they meet the cunning dwarf Olivio Alevado, a man whose lustful desires and vengeful schemes make him a formidable adversary to his enemies and a subtle ally to his friends. Here the destinies of the gypsy adventurer Anton Rider and the courageous, war-hardened Gwenn Llewelyn intersect. Here hope is corrupted by greed, love by revenge, and loyalty by betrayal as the future is trampled into history.
This stirring sequel to The White Rhino Hotel is a historical novel of bold romance and grand adventure that sweeps from cosmopolitan Cairo to the wild highlands of East Africa.
A nation sits at the brink of war; a city is fraught with conspiracy. It's 1935 in East Africa, and at the Cataract Café in Cairo, they gather: professional hunter Anton Rider; his estranged wife and her Italian lover; the pampered American twins, Bernadette and Harriet Mills; an English lord down on his luck; a German freebooter who has stolen a fortune in silver from the Italian army. Under the knowing eye of the Goan dwarf and café proprietor Olivio Alevado, they lay plots and toast alliances. They plan safaris. They gamble with destiny.
"Pulses with entertainment value….The sort of yarn that can keep you up late at night…[a] spirited, sensuous, hot-blooded evocation of a rich and eventful historical world."-New York Times
All the treacherous intrigue and drama of Rommel's desert war in Africa come vibrantly to life in this novel of historical adventure and romance. While Anton and Wellington Rider fight to protect Egypt from the Nazi forces, alliances shift, loyalties deceive, and danger lies in the desert night.
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