TY Book Recommendations 5

Transition Year pupils are well into their reading for their Extended Essays. Niamh Faulkner has been reading In the Service of the Sultan: A First-Hand Account of the Dhofar Insurgency, by Ian Gardiner, and writes:-

 
The book is set in Dhofar, the southern region of Oman, during the 1970s (at the height of the Cold War). The author was a solider fighting there during the Dhofar Rebellion (when the Communists tried to take over the Gulf, to control the oil), so it’s all from his own experiences - from playing football in a wadi, with rules that change as fast as the weather does here, to travelling around the country, where there are no proper roads! I find it a very gripping book, because I find that the Oman that the author is writing about is completely different to the Oman I live in; 30 years ago Oman was an extremely undeveloped nation, with very little infrastructure, the total opposite of what it’s like today. The Dhofar Insurgency isn’t well known, but played a major role in the Cold War, and  I highly recommend this book for people interested in the Cold War or the Middle East, or even if you want something different than the usual romance novel.