Tamanrasset:
Crossroads of the Nomad
by Edward Parr
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GENRE: Historical Fiction
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BOOK BLURB:
TAMANRASSET is historical fiction set on the edge of the Sahara as the ancient world begins to fade and great empires collide. Four strangers—a mature Foreign Legionnaire, a Sharif’s wrathful son, an ambitious American archaeologist, and an abandoned Swedish widow—become adrift and isolated, but when their paths intersect, the fragile connections between them tell a story of survival and fate on the edge of the abyss. Blending the sweep of classic adventure with the horror of a great historical calamities, Edward Parr’s TAMANRASSET is a saga about the crossroads where nomads meet.
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EXCERPT THREE:
The Basilica of Douïmès was quite a lovely site (and fairly peaceful considering the dozen native workmen who were lazily taking measurements and digging pilot holes at Ren’s direction) yet it was not a place for great discoveries. Ren thought about the Byzantine necropolis behind the basilica which seemed such a promising site; unfortunately, Père Delattre had reserved it for his own excavations. Ren wondered how much it would cost to drain the flooded marsh in the Salammbô district nearby where the Temple of Tanit was rumored to be located. As he walked about and reviewed the work of the diggers, Ren became increasingly irritated. Ordinarily, he thought, the Tunisian diggers preferred to do anything but work–they showed a greater interest than the professors in the minutest fragment of pottery and would stand around listening in awe to an academic discussion of a thing they’d never heard of before. Their picks moved with a balletic slowness of motion intended to keep even the most delicate relic safe from harm. Ren had to remind himself again that he was lucky to have earned this position: He had no surviving family, his father had been no one of importance, he had been raised on money left for him in trust. He was lucky to have ended up in England after being orphaned, lucky to have worked with Petrie in Egypt, and lucky to be in Carthage. Nevertheless, he chafed at Delattre’s pedantry and the slow pace of the work.
© 2025 by Edward Parr and Edwardian Press (New Orleans, Louisiana)
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GUEST POST:
Historical Fiction Writing and Ethics
Historical fiction is a genre that sits at the intersection of art and responsibility. By blending fact with imagination, authors bring the past to life for readers who may rely on fictional accounts as much as history books for their understanding of the past. Of course, we now live in an era when the past is being intentionally misrepresented for political purposes, something which I wholeheartedly reject. So I’d like to review some of what I think are the fundamental ethical rules of writing historical fiction and how they apply to my new novel, Tamanrasset: Crossroads of the Nomad. It’s a historical saga of colonial North Africa which follows French Legionnaires, Moroccan rebels, an American archeologist and a grieving European widow through sieges, desert marches, cultural upheaval, the search for lost treasure in a place where survival and identity are tested against the vast, indifferent Sahara.
The first thing I want to mention is that I’ve tried to make the writing very historically accurate – it’s neither pro-colonialist nor anti-colonialist, neither pro-Muslim nor anti-Muslim. Not everything everyone did was good, nor all bad. Certain terrible things did happen which are depicted in the novel, such as the merciless French bombardment of Casablanca or the Doui-Menia siege of Taghit. History isn’t pretty, but we can’t pretend it didn’t happen, nor do I want to make things seem worse than they actually were.
Second, I’ve attempted to treat real historical persons with respect. Figures like Muhammad al-Kattani or Hubert Lyautey or Sultan Abd al-Aziz are treated with seriousness rather than as caricatures. Al-Kattani, for example, is shown as principled, intelligent, and politically active reformer — not reduced to a foil for the European characters.
Third, representing other cultures respectfully and avoiding stereotypes is very important. I’ve tried to allow Moroccan and Algerian voices to speak in their own idioms. One of the central characters, Ahmad al-Haybah, is not “exoticized” but depicted as a young man caught between love, filial duty and warfare. The descriptions of Muslim life avoid orientalist spectacle or hyperbole by focusing on everyday details: bread, prayer, family connections. By presenting North Africans as complex human beings, I have tried to push back against the old colonial adventure-tale stereotypes.
Fourth, it’s okay to balance authenticity and accessibility, to an extent. Ken Follett isn’t writing about Kingsbridge in medieval English. I use prose with an Edwardian cadence and lexicon, echoing travelogues and memoirs of the era, to help immerse readers in the period, yet I declined to reproduce colonial prejudices uncritically: I’ve tried to strike a balance between period authenticity (e.g., the Legionnaires’ fatalism) and a modern awareness that readers need to see the cruelty and futility of empire-building.
Finally, it’s essential that the author remain totally transparent with readers, especially regarding intentional inaccuracies and the ultimate need to refer back to source materials. By including maps, notes, and an epitaph, I’ve tried to signal that Tamanrasset is both “fiction” and “history-based” without being necessarily perfect in its accuracy. These apparati help readers understand what is factual (battles, geography, cultural practices) and what is dramatized. Such transparency respects the reader by not misleading them into thinking fiction is truth.
I like to look back to periods in the past and see in them something relatable and still relevant to us today. Having a “historical” lens allows the events of the past to be held, to a certain extent, at arm’s length so that we can see them better, a bit more objectively, and as a filter through which we can evaluate our own contemporary experiences.. My new novel, Tamanrasset: Crossroads of the Nomad, was inspired by the classic French Foreign Legion pulp fiction genre which was hugely popular in the 1920’s to 1940’s, and while it’s a genre fraught with cultural biases and prejudices, I’ve tried to reinvent the adventure while leaving those problematic issues in the past. I hope it is a story that will immerse readers in a world of peril, resilience, and discovery.
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AUTHOR BIO & LINKS:
Edward (“Ted”) Parr studied playwriting at New York University in the 1980’s, worked with artists Robert Wilson, Anne Bogart, and the Bread and Puppet Theater, and staged his own plays Off-Off-Broadway, including Trask, Mythographia, Jason and Medea, Rising and an original translation of Oedipus Rex before pursuing a lengthy career in the law and public service. He published his Kingdoms Fall trilogy of World War One espionage adventure novels which were collectively awarded Best First Novel and Best Historical Fiction Novel by Literary Classics in 2016. He has always had a strong interest in expanding narrative forms, and in his novel writing, he explores older genres of fiction (like the pulp fiction French Foreign Legion adventures or early espionage fiction) as inspiration to examine historical periods of transformation. His main writing inspirations are Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Bernard Cornwell, Georges Surdez, and Patrick O’Brien.
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BOOK BUY LINKS:
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GIVEAWAY:
Edward will be awarding a $25 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card (Winner's Choice!!!) to a randomly drawn winner.
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