GADSDEN, Ala., Oct. 16, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The gay-bashing murder of an American Embassy attache in a palm grove outside Algiers drives the plot of William Tarvin's novel Nothing/Everything Disconnects/Connects. This vicious homicide points out the radical divisions between Muslim Middle East and Judeo-Christian West, which are fraying the ties that bond humanity.
The hero of the novel straddles both worlds. To save his sister, Omar Naaman, nineteen, betrays comrades and country during Algeria's fight for independence from colonial rule. At the war's end, the defeated French, grateful for his double-dealing service, whisk him to France, bestowing a new identity, Remy Montpellier. There he begins a new life; he marries and starts a family.
Years later, Remy receives a surprising demand from the French DGSE (their intelligence service). He is to return incognito to Algeria to investigate the murder of the American, who (DGSE suspects) had been trafficking classified diplomatic documents which could embarrass France. "Send a traitor to catch a traitor," DGSE argues.
Remy protests that in Algeria he, as Omar, is still branded as a traitor, in fact, the last of the country's seven great collaborateurs, the other six having been tracked down and killed by Algerian agents.
Remy finally agrees to return to his native land, although he conceals from DGSE his true purpose. In Algiers (as Christien Lazar, an investigator for a group championing the young Algerian arrested for the murder), Remy encounters a spectrum of antagonists: the beautiful Algerian fiancee of the murdered American, toward whom he develops an "unsettling" attraction; the American ambassador who is determined that the murderer of his attache be punished; and the Algerian police commissioner, who tells Remy he has dedicated his life to hunting down the "seven traitorous devils," unaware the last sits opposite him.
The plot becomes as twisted as Algiers' mazelike Casbah. Will Remy fulfill his true mission for returning to Algiers or will his treasonous past overtake him? Does everything happily connect -- or nothing?
In his previous book, The Saint of Sodomy (GLB, 1999), William Tarvin, who lived in the Middle East for two decades, satirized Muslim sexual hypocrisies. Though the same barbed wit infuses Nothing/Everything, it is counterpoised by a darker strain that materialistic/spiritual differences between West and Middle East threaten to sever the cords bonding humanity. For more information about this international thriller, log on to www.Xlibris.com.
About the Author
Tarvin, a retired professor of English literature, has published articles on Middle East/Asian education and on literature in such scholarly journals as International Review of Education, The McGill Journal of Education, and Modern Language Quarterly. At present, he resides in Gadsden, Alabama, his hometown, and can be reached at his website www.Tarvinlit.com.
NOTHING/EVERYTHING DISCONNECTS/CONNECTS * by William L. Tarvin
Publication Date: October 13, 2009
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