The Sacred Sands: a novel

by Vahan Zanoyan

Overview

As the eight-year-old war between Iraq and Iran approaches to an end, tensions between the Arab Gulf states and Iraq start to rise. Some of the largest exporters of crude oil in the Persian Gulf collude to bring down the price of oil, at great cost to their national coffers. Oil prices undergo the most erratic fluctuations in decades. Most seasoned observers and analysts, both in the private sector and in the US government, seem oblivious to an impending Gulf war.

It falls to James Blackburn, a global energy consultant based in Washington, DC, to uncover a brewing conflict in the Middle East that exposes and explains the imminent risks. Thrown into an emotional whirlwind between a passionate transatlantic affair and a blossoming affection for another woman closer to home, Blackburn finds himself caught in an equally intractable quandary as the interests of his various clients begin to clash. But the burning question remains: will his warnings to the US intelligence community about the looming cataclysm in the Middle East be heeded?

"...the story is relentlessly paced and brimming with historical insight." Kirkus Reviews

"It is the most accomplished novel I have read this year and I can thoroughly recommend it." --Readers' Favorite Reviews

"A deftly crafted and consistently compelling novel from cover to cover, The Sacred Sands showcases author Vahan Zanoyan as having a genuine flair for original and entertaining storytelling." -California Bookwatch

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780998392400
Publisher:	gampr books
Publication date:	11/29/2016
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Vahan Zanoyan has previously published two novels based on a chance encounter with a sex-trafficking survivor: A Place Far Away and The Doves of Ohanavank. His third novel, The Sacred Sands, reflects his own experience as an international energy consultant.

Before he retired, Zanoyan served as an advisor to governments, private organizations, and other major players in the fossil fuel industry. He currently divides his time between Southern California, Armenia, and the Middle East.

Editorial Reviews

2017-02-02
A historical thriller about the turbulent politics of the Middle East and the oil industry. As the war between Iraq and Iran finally comes to a close in the late 1980s, the region braces itself for a seismic shift of the old order. Iran is increasingly isolated, and a victorious Iraq is brokering a nonaggression pact with Saudi Arabia—a maneuver meant to contain whatever threat Iraq might pose to the OPEC oil cartel. Meanwhile, a secret supranational group that calls itself "The Symposium" works behind the scenes to protect the Persian Gulf area from political excesses and attempts to orchestrate the overthrow of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. However, Israeli intelligence uncovers their existence, and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein soon funnels that information to Fahd. At the heart of the chaos is Jim Blackburn, an American energy consultant with strong ties to the intelligence community, as his father worked for the CIA. He tries to disentangle the skein of Middle Eastern political alliances for his clients, but he realizes that he's stumbled onto information of geopolitical significance when The Symposium takes him into their confidence. The global situation is further complicated when a consortia of public and private Japanese interests attempts to assert itself within the international oil industry. Author Zanoyan (The Doves of Ohanavank, 2014, etc.) was once a global energy consultant, like his protagonist, and his deep knowledge of the sector's economics and Middle Eastern politics is breathtaking. For example, readers learn, through Jim's gimlet-eyed wisdom, that any economic contest over petroleum is always much more that it seems: "It is a game to gain dominance over each other," says Jim at one point. "It is a game to become economically more powerful—more powerful than not only our adversaries, but also our allies." But although the story is relentlessly paced and brimming with historical insight, it's also exasperatingly complex, and some readers will find the long dialogue exchanges about economic theory to be exhausting. Zanoyan does provide some respite with Jim's romantic exploits, though, which are impressive and artfully chronicled. Overall, this will undoubtedly be a feast for anyone who's hungry for knowledge about the Middle East, even though it sometimes feels less like a novel than it does an academic primer. An exceptionally erudite, if sometimes textbooklike, portrait of a key point in a region's history.

Kirkus Reviews