The Kingdom of Emptiness

Returning home after a final tour of duty in Afghanistan, John Fox sees his beliefs crumble as he struggles to re-adapt to both the realities of civilian life and redemption for a fatal error of judgement that cost the life of an Afghan woman.


Two thousand miles away, in remote Mauritania, Badia, an outcast, struggles to raise her son against a backdrop of setbacks as one by one her hopes for a better future are dashed. 


As their disillusion leads to a quest for a new life, Fox and Badia weave a patchwork of events through the lives of Fudge - Fox's comrade-in-arms and seriously wounded in Afghanistan, Azra, Badia's friend and chaperone, Ondersson - a pastor and his aim to build a school in the desert, Neymann - an outlandish American marginal hiding an inner truth and Naym - Badia's son, and his inexorable slide into terrorism. 


It is the story of seven lives, seven challenges - thrown together in a Saharan Mauritania steeped in the growing violence of Al-Qaeda in Maghreb and the secret counter-terrorism operations of the French: seven lives that meet in hope, hatred, love and redemption.