Somewhere in a Desert

A haunting novel of the Gulf War that has been hailed internationally as a literary debut of outstanding ambition and achievement. Operation Desert Storm has ended. A body lies in no-man's land in the desert, across the Iraqi border between the Allied front and a small Saudi village. It hasn't decomposed or burned in the sun. Its eyes are open and its mouth is smiling. No wounds show how the man died. No dog tags or insignia identify on which side he fought. This man is John Miller, an American soldier who has gone missing in action. While his wife, Mary, waits at home in the States for news of her husband, John had disappeared and died an absurd death. Like Michael Ondaatje and Erich Maria Remarque, Dominique Sigaud has made her subject ""war—and the pity of war."" In prose of extraordinary clarity and power, she tells John's story and those of the people who encounter him in his last hours of life and in the days that follow his death: soldiers and civilians, men and women, American, French, Saudi, and Iraqui. The mystery and horror of war are revealed through the eyes and the death of this Unknown Soldier. Hailed internationally as a work of outstanding ambition and achievement, this haunting novel of the Gulf War marks the American debut of a writer of superb originality.