Well told and original, Picture in the Sand reveals much more than promised. Ali Hassan, long a grandfather and bodega owner in BayRidge, carries on a correspondence with his radicalized grandson who has taken off to join Isis. He fills in his backstory, about working for Cecil B. DeMille during the filming of The Ten Commandments, a film that continues to be shown at Easter over 60 years later. What I found most interesting wasn't the fictional thriller hung on the real events or even the events and absurdities of the filming of that movie, but the account of the political activity surrounding the conflict between Egypt and the newly minted Israeli state, the emerging power of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Peter Blauner has researched extensively, creating a believable picture of Egypt under change, and in Ali, a believable character.

What a clever and interesting approach to writing a novel! The characters are well developed and the story is interestingly woven, with the making of The Ten Commandments with Cecile B. DeMille, as Director. Mr. Blauner is a gifted writer. The descriptions of torture, albeit hard for me to read, were visceral. The story is epic, heartbreaking and moving. Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own. #NetGalley, #PictureInTheSand.

Picture in the Sand
By Peter Blauner

This is a wonderful book. It is the kind of story which can help the reader understand the feelings which all humans may experience, and how those feelings of unhappiness, of alienation, can influence the choices and decisions we all make.

The story begins with an American family's discovery that their son, Alex, has become "radicalized" and has left to join other Muslims in their fight against the West. As a child, Alex has experienced prejudice against his Egyptian ancestry after the 9-11 attacks. He grows up feeling that America holds nothing for him and he identifies with his Muslim "brothers" who, he believes, are fighting for religious purity and their way of life. He tells his family that they will not hear from him again. He takes on a new name – Abu Suror – to go with his new life.

His family is horrified and cannot find him. Finally his grandfather, Ali Hassan, reaches out to his last known email address to share with his grandson his own story of his struggles in Egypt against the corrupt government – but also with the cruelty of his comrades in the Brotherhood.

As the grandfather tells his tale, his grandson becomes more and more interested in what happened so long ago. At the same time, Alex is becoming disillusioned by what he sees happening around him – more cruelty in the name of religion.

I was fascinated by this whole story and the way the author told it. I include here a quote from the book that I feel sums it all up:

"…terrorists, dictators, and Hollywood film makers were alike in not accepting the world as it really existed, but insisting that the terms be changed for them, that logic be bent to their purposes, and that life as everyone else knew it be broken down and remade according to their expectations."

Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for this advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review.
Wow when this book popped up as an upcoming title, I had to request it and I am glad I did.
Written in epistolary format and with a dual timeline, we meet Alex, an Egyptian American young man and his grandfather Ali. Alex feels disenchanted with his upbringing in America and wants to join the jihad. Grandpa Ali knows a thing or two about living in Egypt during great turmoil and tells his own story slowly to his grandson, in hopes he can change the course of his grandson's fate. The hook? Ali witnessed the filming of The Ten Commandments and had connections to the cast and crew, especially Cecile B DeMille. Wow.

Having grown up with The Ten Commandments playing in our house at ever holiday it seemed, and loving old films with my mom on rainy Saturday afternoons, I was rapt just as well by this novel. It has all of the feels of a grandfather's love for his grandson and all of the tension of watching your child make terrifying decisions.

The change in the characters as the story unfolds is evident and kept my heart racing. A dash of humor is also throughout, especially in the email account names. You can almost reach out and touch this story. I am also devastated that this history is still being played out but learned so much about the movie and why it was so controversial and why and how the tensions are still there.

I think my patrons will love this and my book club will have a lot to talk about.
4+ stars but not quite a 5. This book is very very good.

All opinions stated here are my own and do not represent my place of employment or patrons. This review will appear on Goodreads.

Honestly brutal, the story of how a grandfather relates the story of his accidental incorporation into a terrorist group in his teens to his wayward teen aged grandson who has skipped going to college to join a group Isis(?) and become a jihadist. Through a series of emails, Ali Hassan tries to persuade his grandson, Alex that joining such a group can only lead to disaster. He relates how he worked on the set of Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments" when they were filming outside of Cairo and how that led to his being pressured to join a group committed to blowing up the set and running the Americans and English out of Egypt.. Things go horribly wrong and young Ali is beaten, tortured and kept in a filthy jail for over 30 years. Alex always wondered about his grandfather's missing eye; it is only when Ali finally relates what happened to him that Alex begins to see that becoming a terrorist will not bring more devout worshipers to Islam. Ali's story is compelling, keeping the reader turning the pages long into the night. Alex's character, although young, doesn't have as much staying power as that of his grandfather. We can only watch as an arrogant young man defies his family and joins up with a radical group who he refers to as his "family." Readers can only hope that blood ties will win out and Alex will realize the mistake he has made. A Must read for fans of historical fiction.

TW/CW: Death, torture, illness, talk of sexual assault, terrorism, violence, racism, brutality

REVIEW: Picture in the Sand is the story of Ali Hassan and his grandson Alex, who begin exchanging letters after Alex leaves the US as a teenager to join a militant Islamic group that seems very much like ISIS.

In these e-mails, Ali sends Alex the story of his life, his work on the movie The Ten Commandments, and how this led to his own experience with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt where he was born and spent the first forty years of his life. Through these letters, the son and the grandfather grow closer to an understanding with each other.

This is a good book, and it was a quick read. I enjoyed it, even though some parts of it were terribly brutal. It never seemed to me that the grandfather’s story and the grandson’s story connected as much as they were supposed to, but I’m still glad that I read it and I recommend it to fans of historical fiction.

Alex Hassan is a New Jersey teenager who leaves a letter for his Egyptian family telling that that instead of heading off to Cornell, he has gone to the Middle East to join the jihad. His grandfather, Ali, is able to get in touch with him and slowly tells him his own story to try to dissuade Alex. Most of the novel is epistolary and tells the fascinating story of Ali's time in 1950's Egypt with the rise of Nasser, competing ideologies and the filming of Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments, Ali gets involved with the Muslim Brotherhood, is imprisoned, and finally immigrates to the US in the early 70s. It is a sweeping story of a time and place I was not familiar with but was fascinated by.

This novel’s family drama over several generations was filled with love, belief, betrayal, angst, faith, and passion…. an interesting book! Told through alternating letters between a grandfather and his grandson while the grandfather tells the story of his youth in Egypt.

Picture in the Sand is everything one could want in a book. The characters are fully fleshed, empathetic and very interesting. The plot is both thrilling ans poignant, presented in a an original and addicting. The story, while based partly on historical events, is real and believable. This is as close to a masterpiece as can be found in modern fiction.

I was on the edge of my seat throughout most of this book. The book within a book could have stood on its own. In fact, I gave it four stars because the email correspondence felt intrusive. I feel the author completely captured the voice of the grandfather, but not so much the grandson's.

That is a minor point. I would certainly recommend the book. I found myself looking up events alluded to in the book and wanting to know more about the process of filming that movie.

This review was based on a pre-publication manuscript from Net Galley.

I tremendously enjoyed “Picture in the Sand,” Peter Blauner’s historical novel set mostly in Egypt during the early 1950s, just as Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power. It is a powerful story about the clash of Western and Islamic cultures that entertains and enlightens. Even though most of the action takes place some 70 years ago, the issues it treats are still very much with us.

The novel begins in 2014 with an email from young Alex Hassan to his Egyptian family living in New Jersey announcing that, instead of attending Cornell University, he has gone to the Middle East to join the jihad. His grandfather, Ali, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1971 and accrued a goodly portion of the American dream, writes back to dissuade him. Thus begins a correspondence between grandfather and grandson that reveals the story of Ali’s own experiences with Egyptian politics, the Islamic faith, and the filming of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments.” It’s a story that Ali, for some reason, has never told before.

Author Peter Blauner does a great job intermingling his fictional characters with the actual events and people of the times. Nasser, DeMille, Charlton Heston, and other famous people make more than cameo appearances. (It turns out that Mr. DeMille was not quite the kindly old gent he portrayed himself to be in “Sunset Boulevard,” at least, not in Mr. Blauner’s hands). And cinema buffs will enjoy going onto the sets of “The Ten Commandments” built in the Egyptian desert. Mr. Blauner’s eye for detail and powers of description bring to life those colossal sets teeming with a cast and crew of thousands, not to mention hundreds of exotic animals.

But it is the conflicts that Mr. Blauner’s characters experience, both internally and externally, that really make the novel. Will young Ali pursue his dreams or sacrifice them in favor of what he believes is right? Will he choose Hollywood crassness and materialism or Islamic extremism? Will he support a Jewish filmmaker he neither knows very well nor likes over his cousin and best friend, a staunch Muslim? And will grandson Alex forever forsake his country and family in favor of jihad? These are just some of the conflicts that kept me reading late into the night.

Author Stephen King calls “Picture in the Sand” a book that reminds him of why he “fell in love with storytelling in the first place.” Such high praise is richly deserved. Congratulations to Mr. Blauner on a terrific novel.

My thanks to NetGalley, author Peter Blauner, and publisher St. Martin’s Press, Minotaur Books for providing me with an electronic ARC. The foregoing is my independent opinion.

4 1/2 🌟s. The American grandson of an Egyptian immigrant thrills his family by being accepted to an Ivy League university but instead he has been radicalized and heads to a holy war in the Middle East. His elderly grandfather begins to secretly communicate with Alex through e-mail and telling him his own story of unwitting and unwilling involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s, his imprisonment, and eventual immigration to the USA. The majority of the story is told first person by the grandfather, Ali Hassan, and is spun out in a engrossing narrative of human frailty and strength; set in part during the on location filming of The Ten Commandments. The italicized email communications interspersed with the narrative tell Alex Hassan’s story in brief, terse, and expressive bursts. Well written and with good character development, Blauner makes us care about the characters, the story, and uses a unique way to express the political nature of Egypt then and now, without vilifying entire religions or races. Well done.

Hold on to your seat! Get ready for a blockbuster of a book!

In Picture, we learn that Alex Hassan has fled his American home to Syria instead of starting his college days at Cornell. His Egyptian American family is shocked and do not know where to turn. His beloved grandfather reaches him via email and shares a manuscript he has written about his life. It's not long before Alex responds and both he and all of us (the readers) are thrown in to the world of Egypt in the 1950's when Alex's grandfather Ali is on the set of the new movie for Cecil B. DeMille. Ali is pulled in many directions as a new Egyptian government is forming and pressure from his cousin to join a more conservative and religious sect that . There are many parallels between Ali and Alex's story - you will be on the edge of your seat until the very last page!

I have never read Peter Blauner, but I will look up his books now, Picture in The Sand is a fantastically original story that employees all of the great techniques that we look for in our favorite movies - there's stars, romance, adventure, family obligations and of course spies, war and politics. If you love a book about Egypt or movies (or both!), love a book about family, or just want the next blockbuster book to thrill you, Picture In the Sand is for you! #StMartinsPress

With its all-too topical examination of current and past Arab extremism, Peter Blauner's "Picture in the Sand" put me in mind of an earlier novel examining American extremism, Robert Stone's 1960s-era "A Hall of Mirrors." It’s largely forgotten now, his remarkably prescient work, but both it, with the cataclysmic right-wing rally that closes the book, and Blauner’s novel, with its depiction of theocratic authoritarianism out of which will eventually come the Twin Towers attacks, bear particular heeding as we head into midterms in which right-wing authoritarianism poses an existential threat to democracy every bit as scary as that depicted by Stone and Blaunder. We ignore the writers' warnings at our own peril.

I loved loved loved this book. Alternating letters between a grandfather and his grandson while the grandpa tells the story of his youth in Egypt.

The grandson leaves home to join Isis without telling his family. He believes he is joining a great cause. His grandfather starts to tell him the story of Egypt, the beginning of Nassar's reign and the Muslim Brotherhood. His grandfather gets caught up in the movement, somewhat inadvertantly. He tells him about working with Cecil B Demille and the filming of the Ten Commandments. He tells him about the plot he got involved in and where it led.

As the grandson spends more time with ISIS, he relates to his grandfathers journey at first admiring and then not.

This book is beautifully written and such a joy to read

Loved loved loved Picture in the Sand by Peter Blauner. This novel’s family drama over several generations was one I didn’t want to ever end. Love, belief, betrayal, angst, faith, passion….fabulous book!

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this amazing ARC.