Michael Scott Moore
Michael Scott Moore is a journalist and author of fiction and non-fiction. He worked for several years as an editor and writer at Spiegel Online International in Berlin. Moore was kidnapped in early 2012 on a reporting trip to Somalia and held hostage by pirates for 32 months. “The Desert and the Sea”, a memoir about that ordeal, is out now from HarperCollins.
Latest from Michael Scott Moore
How Libyan and Italian Authorities Are Hindering Migrant Rescue Ships
On the surface, it is odd that the rescue ship Humanity 1 and the Libyan coast guard should compete because both, in theory, are supposed to save refugees’ lives. But the Libyans are under contract to return migrants to Libya, while the nonprofit vessels want to land them in Europe.
Houthis and Somali Pirates in a Hijacking Whodunit
Piracy returned to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa in November, after a strange constellation of events that had less to do with armed Somalis in skiffs and more to do with the war in Gaza.
Germany Sees a Rise in ‘Anti-Antisemitism’
Middle Eastern politics have never been easy for Berlin. The German state supports the Israeli one, for obvious reasons, and the narrower limits on free speech are an outgrowth of WWII: You can’t praise Hitler, fly a swastika, deny the Holocaust or utter antisemitic hate speech. But the tendency in Germany right now is to squelch as much criticism of Israel as possible.
Somali Pirates Insisted on Muslim Burial for Hostage
In the years that followed our abduction, I think we all recovered in some uneven way. The suffering welded and changed us. Now we were scattered around the world in an intensely remembered network, and even if there would be no grand reunion, cohesion wasn’t totally lost.
Bob Dylan Helped Me Survive Pirate Captivity
I was spending hours alone with my thoughts, ever since a gang of pirates kidnapped me from a car outside the dusty crossroads town of Galkacyo, in central Somalia, during a reporting trip in 2012. The mystery of this song became an obsession.
The Peril of War Correspondence
If and when freedom arrives, the moment surprises you, and you find yourself in the world again holding more emotion than you know how to express.