Esther Kofod

The Libyan Esther Kofod

"THE LIBYAN" sweeps over four continents and several decades on a woman?s journey of passion, terror and betrayal. It puts a face on the lives and culture of Libya during the early years of the ruthless dictator, Muammar Ghaddafi. It is the story of the tumultuous relationship of Lina, a beautiful and sophisticated American, and the enigmatic Kamal, a patriotic Libyan, two people from different worlds, bound together by passion and fate. When they return to begin a new life in Libya, Lina finds herself in a country terrorized by random arrests and public hangings. Driven by his longing for a better Libya, Kamal struggles to survive politically while Lina lives in fear of her husband being imprisoned - or killed. As Ghaddafi transformed the richest nation in Africa into the most repressed and brutalized country in the Arab world, Kamal battles to realize his dream for Libya's future, but soon becomes a target of the dreaded secret police. Forced to leave his beloved Libya and become a hunted dissident, the Libyan has to choose between the woman he loves and his obsession to overthrow Ghaddafi. He joins a group of elite intellectual dissidents to establish the most powerful of all the opposition parties, and many of Kamal's peers are now leaders of the new Libya.