Festival in the Desert
In the book, doctors at a fictional Christian mission hospital are under attack from Islamist rebels who are trying to take control of part of the country. The rebels are financed by outside interests, and are working with comrades who are returning from Libya - following the fall of Colonel Gaddafi - with large quantities of advanced weaponry.
“In my novel I featured terrorists, kidnappings and attacks on Westerners,”
“Now we see the French taking back much of the territory, and we are learning the reasons for all the fighting, which was also pre-figured in my book.”
Did he expect this when he wrote the novel?
“No, of course I didn’t expect events to transpire in exactly the way they did. But when I began research for the novel it was clear that conditions in Mali and the surrounding countries were highly combustible.
“The northern half of the country had become a lawless Wild West, with heavily armed rebel forces, drug dealers, terrorists and religious extremists. It was an explosive mix. Something dramatic was almost inevitable.”
“Festival in the Desert” is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online bookstores.
Learn more about Martin Roth's novels at http://www.authormartinroth.com.
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
