Asher, Michael 1953-

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ASHER, Michael 1953-

PERSONAL: Born 1953; married Mariantonietta Peru (a photographer and Arabist); children: one son. Education: Graduated from University of Leeds.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins, 77-85 Fulham Palace Rd., Hammersmith, London W6 8JB, England.

CAREER: Writer. Volunteer teacher in the Sudan, 1979–c. 1982; Host for television documentaries, including (with wife, Mariantonietta Peru) In Search of Lawrence, Channel Four (England), 1997; and The Ends of the Earth, Channel Four, 2000. Military service: British Military; served in the parachute regiment, special air service regiment, and special patrol group.

MEMBER: Royal Society of Literature (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS: Ness Award, Royal Geographical Society, 1993; Mungo Park Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society for Exploration.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

In Search of the Forty Days Road (travel), Longman (Harlow, Essex, England), 1984.

A Desert Dies, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1986.

Two against the Sahara: On Camelback from Nouakchott to the Nile (travel), photographs by wife, Mariantonietta Peru, Morrow (New York, NY), 1988, published as Impossible Journey: Two against the Sahara, Viking (London, England), 1988.

Shoot to Kill: A Soldier's Journey through Violence, Penguin (London, England), 1991.

Thesiger: A Biography, Viking (London, England), 1994.

(With Werner Forman) Phoenix Rising: The United Arab Emirates, Past, Present and Future, Harvill Press (London, England), 1996.

Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia (biography and travel), Viking (London, England), 1998, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 1999.

The Real Bravo Two Zero: The Truth behind Bravo Two Zero, Cassell (London, England), 2002.

Get Rommel: The Secret British Mission to Kill Hitler's Greatest General, Orion, 2004.

NOVELS

The Eye of Ra, HarperCollins (London, England), 1999.

Firebird, HarperCollins (London, England), 2000.

Rare Earth, HarperCollins (London, England), 2002.

Sandstorm, HarperCollins (London, England), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: A one-time teacher of English in the Sudan, Michael Asher became enamored of the desert and the arduous, vanishing lifestyle of the region's people, staying in the Sudan to explore and write about it after he was done teaching. His books include accounts of the three years he lived with a nomadic tribe; a trek across the Sahara with his wife, photographer Mariantonietta Peru; and a biography of a famous English explorer of the desert, Wilfred Thesiger. He has garnered praise for his ability to evoke the beauty and mystique of life in the desert without sentimentality.

Asher's first book, In Search of the Forty Days Road, describes the author's search for a legendary trade route through the Sudan. A critic for the Washington Post Book World called Asher's story "intriguing" and the author "an artist" due to his poetic descriptions of desert scenery and way of life, the critic concluding that "this is a book to put alongside [Wilfred] Thesiger's desert classic, Arabian Sands." The reference to Thesiger is auspicious, given Asher's later biography of the eccentric twentieth-century desert explorer. In Thesiger: A Biography, Asher provides "an admirable resume and a personal appreciation of one traveller by another," according to Jeremy Harding in the Times Literary Supplement.

Illustrated with numerous photographs and maps, Asher's Thesiger recounts its subject's unusual life among the desert tribes, augmented by interviews with the subject himself. Although Harding faulted the author's tendency to "write like an exclusive travel agent" in places, piling extravagant image upon image, "Most of the time," Harding continued, "one is in the capable hands of a good all-rounder—journalist, traveller, naturalist and historiographer—who clearly loves the drastic environment of the desert as much as Thesiger's writing … and rightly sees the same magnificence in both." Basil Davidson added in the Spectator that the author "writes here with a true expertise, without abandoning independence, and pulls off the difficult trick of distancing himself from his subject while making sure that admiration shines through."

In the early 1980s, Asher lived among a nomadic tribe in the northern Sudan region for three years, herding camels across the desert and helping to guard the camp from attacks by enemy tribes. The resulting book, A Desert Dies, focuses on the way of life of these people, the Kababish, and their decimation by a drought that began in 1984, forcing many of the area's nomadic tribes south, near Khartoum. Times Literary Supplement contributor Ivan Hill called A Desert Dies "a remarkable record of the nomadic way of life." Although a Kirkus Reviews critic complained that Asher's narrative lacks shape—its meandering mirroring the author's travels through the desert—and focus, the reviewer added, "Both potentially vivid events and mundane detail are treated with the same obsessive thoroughness." Times Literary Supplement writer Jeremy Swift praised Asher as "an accurate observer" who "avoids obvious errors" and "writes well." "His main virtue," Swift continued, "is that he writes intelligently and perceptively about the daily life of these camel herders in a way that few anthropologists, or voluntary development workers … can do."

While traveling and working in the Sudan in the 1980s, Asher met an Italian photographer and Arabist, Mariantonietta Peru, and the two were later married. Five days into the union, the couple embarked on a trek across the Sahara from west to east. It was a journey of some 4,500 miles on foot and camel-back that lasted nearly a year and tested the strength of both the travelers and their new marriage. The resulting book, Two against the Sahara: On Camelback from Nouakchott to the Nile (published in England as Impossible Journey: Two against the Sahara), written by Asher and illustrated with photographs by Peru, was deemed "more fascinating than most" accounts of arduous journeys in strange lands, by a Washington Post Book World contributor. Asher recalls the strain on his new marriage caused by the rigors of the journey, and "writes well about comic and unnerving encounters with frontier guards,… about the surliness of his camels, [and] about the men who become their guides," according to Caroline Moorehead in the Times Literary Supplement. Moorehead concluded that, while the travelers' route causes them to fail to become the first Westerners to make this journey (as they had intended), to emphasize this fact is "to quibble. Impossible Journey is a very readable book about an extraordinarily tough journey," Moorehead continued, "and both as writer and traveller Michael Asher emerges with credit."

One well-known adventurer in particular who greatly influenced Asher's interest in this part of the world and inspired his journeys is British hero T. E. Lawrence. Asher wrote an biography about Lawrence titled Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia. As Lucy Hughes-Hallett explained in the London Sunday Times, "Asher's Lawrence is neither a driven visionary nor a great man, but one who had the right talents for an awfully big adventure." Known throughout the world in his lifetime, Lawrence was the subject for the film Lawrence of Arabia. He served as a British army officer during World War I, helped enlist the Arabs as allies during the war, and was a supporter of the independence movement of the Arab people from Turkey. Asher's book explores the trailblazer's well-known exploits, which Lawrence wrote about in his memoir, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Asher followed Lawerence's path for two years to determine if everything Lawrence claimed happened actually occurred. The author, however, could not prove many of Lawrence's accounts with any great certainty. Library Journal critic Harry Frumerman found Lawrence to be "detailed, sympathetic, but nevertheless clear-eyed." Asher also includes an analysis of Lawrence's troubled personal life and sexuality. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly commented positively on this element of the biography, noting that "the book presents an excellent analysis of the personal demons that plagued Lawrence throughout his life."

In the late 1990s, Asher began focusing primarily on fiction, though he still planned on writing the occasional nonfiction book. In his novels Asher drew on his own experiences with the Bedouin in North Africa and Egypt, as well as his longtime interest in and research on ancient Egypt. His first novel, The Eye of Ra, is set primarily in Cairo, Egypt. Both the mythical and the real Egypt play key roles in this thriller. At the novel's center is archaeologist Omar Ross, who investigates the mysterious death of Richard Cranwell, an Egyptologist and colleague, and others; their deaths are apparently related to an ancient inscription. For clues, Ross looks into the family of his mother, who are members of the nomadic Bedouin tribes.

Asher followed The Eye of Ra with Day of the Firebird. His second novel features some of the same characters as his first, though the two books are not intended to form the beginning of a series. Instead, Day of the Firebird continues to explore Egypt's past and present and a series of murders. These crimes are investigated by a police officer in Cairo named Sammy Rashid and FBI agent Daisy Brooke.

Though these books are works of fiction, Asher puts much of himself into them. He also uses the books as another way to express his love of the desert. In an interview published on the HarperCollins Australia Web site, Asher stated: "Sammy Rashid and—to a greater extent—Omar Ross in The Eye of Ra—are partly me. I've spent much of my life in Africa, particularly Arab Africa, if you like, Sudan and Egypt, so there is a part of myself which is very much involved with that."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August, 1999, Brad Hooper, review of Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia, p. 2016.

Contemporary Review, December, 2004, review of Get Rommel: The Secret British Mission to Kill Hitler's Greatest General, p. 383.

Geographical Magazine, September, 1994, Andre Norton, review of Thesiger: A Biography, p. 34.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1987, review of A Desert Dies, p. 899.

Library Journal, August, 1999, Harry Frumerman, review of Lawrence, p. 104.

New Leader, October 18, 1999, Roger Draper, "Jesus of Arabia," review of Lawrence, p. 15.

Publishers Weekly, July 19, 1999, review of Lawrence, p. 171.

Scotsman, June 1, 2002, Michael Kerrigan, review of The Real Bravo Two Zero: The Truth behind Bravo Two Zero, p. 6.

Spectator, October 1, 1994, Basil Davidson, review of Thesiger, pp. 36-37.

Sunday Times (London, England), October 11, 1998, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, "A Talent for Adventure," review of Lawrence, p. 4.

Times Literary Supplement, July 10, 1987, Jeremy Swift, review of A Desert Dies, p. 753; August 12, 1988, Ivan Hill, review of A Desert Dies, p. 895; November 25, 1988, Caroline Moorehead, review of Impossible Journey: Two against the Desert, p. 1308; November 18, 1994, Jeremy Harding, review of Thesiger, pp. 4-5; August 2, 2002, Charles Vyvyan, review of The Real Bravo Two Zero, pp. 32-33.

Washington Post Book World, July 12, 1987, review of In Search of the Forty Days Road, p. 13; August 20, 1989, review of Two against the Sahara, p. 13.

Wilson Quarterly, autumn, 1999, Clive Davis, review of Lawrence, p. 123.