A House in the Sky
A House in the Sky is the 2013 memoir of Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout, written with New York Times reporter Sara Corbett. Lindhout, a small-town Alberta cocktail waitress, spent her early twenties saving up for backpacking trips to Latin America, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, and in 2007 reinvented herself in Baghdad as a freelance war correspondent, despite no formal training and no full-time outlet. In August 2008 she traveled to Somalia with the photographer Nigel Brennan and a small Somali team to report on a clinic outside Mogadishu. On the road south of the city the convoy was stopped by armed teenagers and the two foreigners were taken hostage. The book is the unsparing record of the four hundred and sixty days they were held: shifting between abandoned houses, repeatedly assaulted, malnourished, and increasingly isolated, while their families in Canada and Australia worked to negotiate a ransom. Lindhout writes with extraordinary clarity and very little self-pity about how she survived, and what she survived by inventing in her own mind.
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A young Canadian travels the world as a freelance reporter and is taken hostage in Somalia. Her account follows the long months of captivity and the inner life that kept her going.
Yes. A House in the Sky is a 2013 memoir by Amanda Lindhout, who was kidnapped while reporting in Somalia in 2008 and held captive for 460 days. The book details her childhood, journalism career, and the abduction and torture she survived.
A House in the Sky contains graphic descriptions of physical and sexual violence, prolonged captivity, and trauma. Some passages are difficult to read. Lindhout handles the material with care, but the content remains intense.
A House in the Sky was written by Amanda Lindhout, published in 2013 by Scribner.
A House in the Sky is 652 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, A House in the Sky takes most readers 10 to 14 hours to finish.
A House in the Sky is a standalone novel by Amanda Lindhout, not part of a series.
A House in the Sky is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
