Hear Our Defeats

Timely and provocative, Hear Our Defeats is a novel about the battles that define us. The battles lost, won, and those still being fought.A French intelligence officer, Assem, is tasked with tracking down a former member of the U.S. Special Forces suspected of drug trafficking during the War in Afghanistan. En route to Beirut he shares a night with Miriam, an Iraqi archaeologist, who is in a race against time to save ancient artifacts across the Middle East from the destruction wreaked by ISIS.Woven into these two forceful, gripping storylines are stylish meditations on humankind's bellicose history: Hannibal's failed march on Rome and the burning of his fleet on the waters of the Mediterranean; Grant's pursuit of the Confederates into rural Virginia; Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; and Emperor Haile Selassie's swift retreat from Ethiopia. All turning points in world history, each showing a different facet of how nations and individuals...