Customer Reviews

The Sand Cafe

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to become a journalist or date one.
Imagine M.A.S.H. meets Sex in the City with a little Jon Stewart thrown into the mix. A crowd of mostly youthful, virulent, edgy thirty-somethings with fire in their bellies as well as their loins are stuck for seven months in a 190-room Saudi hotel desperately looking for the next big scoop and a little warmth, with very limited supplies of either available. They lie, they cheat, they broadcast the most intimate details of their sex lives with colleagues, they literally hit each other, and somehow they still manage to broadcast the news.
The relatively small number of excellent journalists heroically stand up to a bewildering gauntlet of obstacles from cut throat colleagues to a dominating Pentagon, which tries to assert complete control over what the American public is allowed to learn about the Gulf War.
The writing in The Sand Caf? is terrific, insightful and hilariously funny. I read every chance I got. There's a lot to learn from this tour guide about how the media actually covers a war or fails miserably in the attempt through laziness and incompetence. Aside from getting an appalling sense of how the news is made, I also learned much about the military, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Arab attitudes towards one another and the West, about fanatics and why they are tolerated, about Osama bin Laden and other terrorists, not to mention a bit of history. All in all it's a great orientation to an ever-important region.
I loved reading it, and so will you.

Like Hemingway in THE FIFTH COLUMN, Neil MacFarquhar tells a hard-hitting and painful story about what happens when American and international writers are cooped up too long in a hotel outside a foreign war zone, where their every move is watched for signs of subversive activity. Angus is his own man, a stylish journalist who has the misfortune to fall for the one woman, Thea, who's wise to his ways. Thea's an associate producer for a major network who's being courted by Aaron, a powerful network producer who promises her a one way ticket out of the rat race.

In the background the 1991 US incursion into the Gulf rages while our troops struggle to support an oil-rich society in which there's an ice cream parlor with American ice cream, but a little sign says, "No woman may sit in this shop." The walls of the luxury hotel in which the press corps stays are so thin you can hear the man or woman in the next room having a drink, having sex, or arguing with relatives back at home over the phone. Just before the rise of the internet, US citizens depended on TV news as never before, and McFarquhar shows us how a united and greedy corporate mentality prevented us from finding out anything about the truth. It just wasn't profitable down at the Sand Cafe to do so.

As Angus's despair grows, his need for Thea becomes more intense. At first they were having just a light affair to while away the fugitive hours. But little by little her beauty and intelligence began to wear a hole in his heart. She admits that he's a good man, that the sex between them has been good for them both. And yet the tragic conundrum remains, as though Hemingway had been given a good talking to by Edith Wharton--sometimes the right man for a woman is the wrong man for a woman. Though Neil McFarquhar betrays the obvious flaws of a first-time novelist, and his book is roughly a third longer than it has any right to be, he has definite promise and his atmosphere is fresh as a desert oasis.

This is a great book written in sparse language about journalism, love, the desert and loneliness. It's also the closest thing most readers will ever get to experiencing what exactly goes on behind the scenes during the reporting of a war. I should know. I've covered 8 wars over the last 20 years. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the media, the egos involved and how the quest for face-time and the love of live shots distorts the news. I'd also recommend this for anyone who wants to be drawn into an intriguing story about a dashing guy looking for love in all the wrong places.

This is a great novel - engrossing, topical, stylish and very funny. With this it also manages to reveal a great deal about how the press shapes and limits our understanding of war and of the Middle East/Islam. The educational side - usually coveyed in hilarious anecdotes - all mesh, and I came away exhilerated. It is also incredibly relevant to the current Iraq war and illuminates the failure of communication and understanding between the US and the Arab world. This important novel should be very, very widely read.

I loved this book. It is beautifully written and very evocative of the region (yes, I've been!) and of the macho world of adrenalin junkie war correspondents (who seem more interested in being the first to break a story than in the story itself). With this sorry gaggle in charge of the news (particularly the on-camera TV journalists in their Banana Republic fatigues), is it any wonder that nobody knows what the hell is going on in this or any other war? You won't find any Robert Capas here. What you will find is a brilliantly observed picture of war reporting from someone who has clearly been there. I totally agree with the Washington Post's take that "... few novels so honestly portray what reporting abroad is like in the era of the American colossus." And (big bonus) it made me laugh out loud in the process.

Considering the amount of propaganda about the first Gulf War, and the current invasion of Iraq, Mr. MacFarquhar's writing is impressive. There's not simply one reporter at a major event, but dozens. His writing gives a real sense of the organized chaos and infighting that occurs; both on the part of the military and the press.

Since satellite television provides instant communication, the requirement by the military and the press to provide a balance between adequate reporting and advising the enemy of their successes becomes a real tightrope. The author illustrates this requirement very well.

His sideplot concerning Thea is well-intentioned, but misplaced. The author was trying to show that even reporters have personal lives; no question about that, but somehow the balance is not achieved. It may be that the author is more comfortable writing about reporting than personal relationships.

This book sounded great but it soon was apparent that the spine of it -- the reporter's romance with a TV babe -- was clumsy and lacking in chemistry. Obvious targets, such as the Pentagon's managing of the press, the press' boorishness and silliness, (especially broadcast talent) and the shallowness of TV coverage versus that of print coverage are thoroughy worked over. The overall story is episodic and repetitve, and beyond an occasional glimpse into oddities of Saudi soicety, and bits that reveal a new angle on the military, this is repetitive and lacking in insight. Relationships tend to be one-note and dry. The prose is often flat-footed. Worth perusing for some nuggets but as a whole it's got almost no story and offers not much beyond what a good news watcher/reader would have absorbed during the first Gulf War.

This is an excellent book, insightful comment on the media, Saudi Arabia, journalists egos and the miltary, yet hilariously funny at the same time. Much is based on fact, and I'm sure many of the characters are household names. I am convinced that Thea is Christiane Amanpour of CNN.
There is a interview with the author on NPR which is worth listening too (I think it is available for download).

I am one of the many joiurnalists who actually lived and ate at the REAL Sand Cafe during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. This is an excellent "read" that brought back thousands of memories from that time. It is a wonderful up close look at what life is like for today's "news bedouins."

Neil MacFarquhar's book is a terrific read about a stressful time in an exotic land. As a journalist covering the run-up to the Gulf War, the protagonist's musings & anxieties offer a glimpse into the life of a war correspondent. The description of the nightly Scud attacks & the resulting Patriot missiles blasting them out of the sky become the backdrop to the blasé live news broadcasts sent out by the reporters all fighting to cover the war.The behind the scenes jockeying for airtime was totally believable & highly entertaining!

The romantic storyline runs concurrently with the war narrative in a coherent manner which kept me hooked. Since I happened to be in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion - I especially loved Neil's astute observations from across the border - his descriptions of the desert, the Arabs, the boredom all rang true.

As the co-author of 'The American Muslim Teenager's Handbook',I found his comments about Muslims informed & respectful - he clearly has drawn on his years of living in Cairo, amongst other countries, for much of the content.The American Muslim Teenager's Handbook