Published 11/02/26 · ISBN 979-8234287014
PurchaseYasser El Sayed's first novel, Storm from a Distant Country, is set among expatriate American oil workers in Libya in the 1970s. When a woman from a small town in northern Wisconsin is transplanted to the scorched terrain of North Africa, she falls into a fraught relationship with a Libyan police officer who is haunted by the darkness of a life spent in the service of a repressive regime. Storm from a Distant Country explores the human yearning for love and for a place in the world to call home.
“Storm from a Distant Country follows an unforgettable cast of characters trying to forge new lives in Libya—each wildly different from the others, but all of them pressing forward with an intoxicating mix of exuberance and despair. Slowly and inexorably, their lives begin to intersect, then collide, then swirl together with the force of the obliterating desert winds that loom in the background. With sharp insight and singular compassion, Yasser El-Sayed captures the complexity of being alive, and how living means bringing harm as well as comfort to others. An immersive, transportive, and devastating novel.”
“Yasser El-Sayed is a writer of virtuosic precision whose characters and settings are achingly real. Storm from a Distant Country is a work of great compassion and beauty that showcases El-Sayed’s acute understanding of humanity. Largely set in North Africa, this is a novel of depth and insight that, in a manner reminiscent of Larry Brown, illustrates how people’s circumstances and actions can propel them towards tragic consequences. ”
“Storms can be predicted, but the destruction they unveil is a unique moment in time. In the case of Yasser El-Sayed’s Storm from a Distant Country, the time is the spring of 1977 and the place is Tripoli, Libya. As a storm sweeps up from the Sahara, the lives of American expats and Libyan locals play out amidst a combustible landscape of potential dreams and impending tragedies. This is an intense and powerful novel, the language captivating and the imagery cinematic in scope. El-Sayed has written a masterful Mediterranean Noir. You won’t put it down! ”
