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Michael Scott Moore
International Bestselling Author of The Desert and the Sea (HarperCollins)
Former Captive of Somali Pirates, Award-Winning Journalist
Michael has won Fulbright, Logan, and Pulitzer Center grants for his nonfiction, as well as a MacDowell Colony fellowship for his fiction. He has appeared on The Daily Show, Joe Rogan, NPR’s Fresh Air and All Things Considered for his bestselling memoir The Desert and the Sea (HarperCollins; 2017), an account of his 977 days as a captive of Somali pirates. Michael has covered the European migration crisis for Businessweek, and politics, travel, and literature for The Atlantic, the New York Times, the L.A. Times, The Daily Beast, The L.A. Review of Books, Der Spiegel, the New Republic, and Pacific Standard. He has dual German and US citizenship and gives lectures in both German and English.
Books
Praise for The Desert and the Sea
International Bestseller
“A harrowing and affecting account of two and a half years of captivity at the hands of Somali pirates. A deftly constructed and tautly told rejoinder to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, sympathetic but also sharp-edged.”
“Highly addictive reading material….Michael Scott Moore delivers an amazing true-life thriller, one of the most suspenseful books written in recent years, that tracks across oceans and underworlds, culminating in a very rewarding, deeply profound end.”
“Moore’s elegant, 450-page account of his life in Somalia’s hostage machine conveys suffering on an epic scale, a hotter, dustier version, perhaps, of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”