Theroux in Arabia

No, not Paul Theroux, but his brother, Peter, who wrote an insightful and delightful book, Sandstorms, about his sojourn in Saudi Arabia during the 1980s. I happened to come across it while visiting the desert kingdom for an upcoming story. “Sandstorms” was published in 1990 and appears to have been nearly forgotten (current Amazon rank: 1,232,321), and that’s a pity.

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.