Brutal Honesty of a Journalist Kidnapped by Somali Pirates

A Canadian investigative journalist who was kidnapped by Somalia pirates for three years has published his memoirs about 997 days of captivity.

Michael Scott Moore’s book “The Desert and the Sea” is written with dark humor, rare bluntness, and a journalistic narrative and published by Harper Collins publication, according to the publisher’s website.

In January 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online International and funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to write about piracy and ways to end it. In a terrible twist of fate, he was kidnapped and held captive by Somali pirates.

In September 2014, he walked free when his ransom ($1.6 million) was put together by the help of several US and German institutes, friends, colleagues and his mother.

Aside from his personal experience, “The Desert and the Sea” falls at the intersection of reportage, memoir and history. In his book, Moore has described the economics and history of piracy, the effects of post-colonialism, and the politics of hostage negotiation and ransom.

In nearly three years of captivity at the hands of Somali pirates, what got Moore through the ordeal most was actually giving up hope.

“I learned to live without hope,” Moore said during a book signing at Pages, a bookstore in Manhattan on July 19.

That was just one of the stunning and brutally honest revelations Moore made during the intimate question and answer session at the bookstore.