Hammond Innes · 1960 · survival
Hammond Innes's 1960 adventure. A Cardiff solicitor helps a wild Welsh boy find the father he has never met - a legendary oilman turned Arabian eccentric, mistrusted by the companies for insisting there is oil where the geologists say there is none. The search leads through Bahrain and the Trucial coast into the sands, where water matters more than oil and both are worth killing for.
- 1Cardiff
In a Cardiff solicitor's office, a wild young Welshman named David learns the identity of the father he has never met - Colonel Whitaker, an Englishman turned Arab, oil prospector and outcast - and sets off to find him.
- 2Bahrain
At Bahrain, hub of the Gulf oil trade, the boy's trail is picked up by the lawyer who followed him out - a world of company men and concessions where Whitaker's name is spoken with reverence or contempt.
- 3Sharjah
On the Trucial coast at Sharjah, among the dhows and the airstrip and the intrigues of small sheikhdoms, the search meets the politics of oil - and the son begins to understand what his father has staked his life and reputation on.
- 4The Rub al Khali
Out on the edge of the Empty Quarter, in a dying oasis whose falajes are drying year by year, father and son come together over water, oil and a raid - and the desert exacts the price it always does.