Sand

SAND explores the sexual and religious roots of jihadist terrorism. It is a snapshot album of Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s, when contemporary jihadism sprouted in the sands of the Kingdom. It is a novel that is more than the sum of its parts, more than its plot: a mystery centered on a delusional, religious-police detective investigating trouble at a five-star hotel in Riyadh. Graphic descriptions expose the sexual mania that motivates self-justified intolerance and violence resulting from a repressive society. Written by an American journalist who covered the Middle East at the time, SAND is a realistic story of characters, events, and an ideology so extreme that its telling is at times surreal. Neither Saudis nor their highly-paid foreign workers -- Americans, British, Canadian, Filipino, Pakistani, and others -- are spared. SAND describes a place where misogyny, predatory sexual opportunism, heterosexual and homosexual, religious terrorism, rape, stoning, and greed are the norm.