Proof of Life: Twenty Days on the Hunt for a Missing Person in the Middle East

by Daniel Levin, Will Collyer (Read by)

Overview

A suspenseful and thrilling account by a hostage negotiator searching for a missing person in Syria over eighteen tense days.

Daniel Levin was at his office one day when he got a call from an acquaintance with an urgent, cryptic request to meet in Paris. A young man had gone missing in Syria. No government, embassy, or intelligence agency would help. Could he? So begins a suspenseful, shocking, and at times brutal true story of one man’s search to find a missing person in Syria over eighteen tense days. Levin, a lawyer turned armed conflict negotiator, uses his extensive Middle Eastern contacts to chase one lead to the next. In Beirut he meets with a powerful sheikh to learn who may have kidnapped the young man. In Dubai he has drinks with the king of the Captagon trade (the ISIS drug of choice that is fueling fighters in Syria and elsewhere) to learn why. His search takes him to a bar in Amman where men purchase women—girls, really—who have been taken from their families. Finally he will track down the truth.

We all know the horrific stories of Westerners kidnapped in the Mideast, but Levin dives into a true heart of darkness where reporters don’t have access—an underground world where arms, drugs, and people are for sale. He effectively captures the industry of war—the few who profit and the many who suffer—and his book is a study of power. It’s about how people use leverage to get what they want from one another, where no one does a favor without wanting something in return, whether it’s immediately or years down the road.

Daniel Levin is one of the few people with the access, expertise, and ability to tell this story. Proof of Life is a fast-paced thriller wrapped in a memoir, a must-read for anyone interested in international affairs, current events, the Middle East, or our growing number of forever wars. But it is by no means all dark. Daniel finds people of courage and kindness, people who retain their essential goodness and spirit despite what continues to go on in this part of the world.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665048040
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	05/18/2021
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 5.80(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

The son of a diplomat, Daniel Levin spent his early years in the Middle East and in Africa and then trained as a lawyer. Currently a board member of the Liechtenstein Foundation for State Governance, he has, for the past twenty years, worked with governments and development institutions worldwide, focusing on economic development and political reform through financial literacy, political inclusion, and constitutional initiatives. He is also engaged in Track 3 diplomacy and mediation efforts in war zones. Levin’s first book, Nothing but a Circus: Misadventures Among the Powerful, was published in Germany, Japan, Russia, and the UK. Proof of Life is his first book to be published in the United States. He lives outside New York City.

Editorial Reviews

03/01/2021

Levin (Nothing But a Circus), a board member of the Liechtenstein Foundation for State Governance, delivers an uneven account of his efforts to find an American who’d disappeared in Syria. In 2014, a business associate asked Levin to look into the case of a young man (here identified by the alias Paul Blocher) who had set out for Aleppo with the intention of assisting a group of volunteer doctors. Fearing that his son had been kidnapped, Blocher’s father decided to keep his name out of the press and work through private channels to resolve the situation. Levin, who had been involved in a project to mediate between warring factions in Syria and identify individuals for postwar leadership roles, agreed to make use of his contacts to locate Blocher. In his meandering account of the nearly three-week search, Blocher’s plight sometimes recedes into the background, as when Levin recounts his intervention to save a cook’s job after a boorish hotel guest demanded his firing. There are ample details about other cases of kidnapped Westerners in the Middle East and vivid profiles of regional power brokers, smugglers, and funders of terrorism, but Levin’s reconstructed dialogue occasionally rings false and the discovery of Blocher’s fate is somewhat anticlimactic. This would-be thriller disappoints. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Riveting . . . . Well-written and highly compelling . . . Mr. Levin seems to grasp the region’s complexity, but instead of flaunting his insider status he draws the reader into the picture. This is a welcome departure from other books on the region that let their authors’ views overshadow the subjects’ stories. On the surface, Proof of Life is a thrilling account of intrigue and espionage, but lurking underneath are important lessons on the Syrian conflict and the entrenched interests that will make ending the war—and curtailing the massive profits it provides to a new elite—a difficult prospect."
—Wall Street Journal

“A portrait of a contemporary morass in the Middle East emerges, as Levin thoughtfully interrogates the signs of hope and hopelessness.”
—CrimeReads

“Levin’s narrative ably depicts the complex interactions of Middle Eastern politics.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Levin’s story is not an easy one to experience, but it is an important one.”
—Booklist

“It is rare to understand the Middle East and the Gulf so accurately, including the West's hypocrisy and the emptiness of these skyscraper cities, in which some people help sincerely, while others, who share our blood, are so willing to shed it. Daniel Levin got it all right in Proof of Life.”
—Alaa Al-Siddiq, Executive Director of ALQST for Human Rights 

“Adroitly navigating myriad cultures, linguistic barriers, and dangerous situations, Levin shows that individuals can and do make a difference in the face of profound adversity. In laying bare the raw human toll of the ferocious and cruel Syrian conflict, Proof of Life asks the reader to make a choice between cynicism and compassion for Syria and for all those who continue to suffer.”
—Ayaan Hirsi Ali, New York Times bestselling author of Infidel

“From the first to final page, I couldn’t stop reading. Proof of Life is a penetrating portrait of how the Middle East operates through webs of power that dehumanize all but a special few. Compelling!”
—Karen Elliott House, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of On Saudi Arabia

“For much of the last decade, Syria has been proclaimed the world’s ‘worst humanitarian disaster,’ but for most of us its horrors are so far removed from our daily lives that those words mean little. Nobody can say that after reading this gripping book by Daniel Levin.” 
—Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group, and New York Times bestselling author of Us vs. Them  

“Daniel Levin is a rarity — one of those people who knows how the world really works—and his pulsating tale of a hostage rescue mission in the badlands of the Middle East is in a genre of its own.”
—Tom Wright, New York Times bestselling author of Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
 
“Proof of Life is a true James Bond story for our time, whose hero carries a voice recorder instead of a gun. The portraits of Beirut and Dubai, and the horrors of the Syrian war are devastating.”
—Helen C. Epstein, author of Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror

“Daniel Levin tells the story of Syria’s complex web of armed groups, political interests, and social issues through the lens of a single story. Few books capture the depth of Syria’s tragedy and the human dimension like Proof of Life.”
—Vali Nasr, Professor of Middle East Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and New York Times bestselling author of The Shia Revival

“Like a true-life Graham Greene novel, Proof of Life is the behind-the-scenes story of intrigue, danger, kidnapping, and negotiation inside Syria’s brutal civil war. How do wars really look up close—and how can they end? Daniel Levin has brought years of political experience to write a book that moves from Beirut to Istanbul to New York and Paris effortlessly like the best of all thrillers—and that illuminates one of the most complicated and tragic conflicts in modern history.”
—Janine di Giovanni, Senior Fellow, Yale Jackson Institute, and National Magazine award-winning author of The Morning They Came for Us

“Proof of Life exposes the exploitation of the most vulnerable and the depravity of those responsible. Yet it also offers a glimpse of an alternative, beautiful outcome when a few people decide to help. A must-read!”
—Hala Al-Dosari, recipient of Human Rights Watch’s Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism 

From the Publisher

2021-03-09
Anecdotal account of an effort to find a missing young man in civil war–riven Syria.

Levin, a lawyer and armed-conflict negotiator who has vast experience with the Middle East, delivers “a story about loss and sadness, about violence and death, about unspeakable cruelty and greed—the daily menu of Syria’s devastating war.” More than that, he reveals the complex grammar of quid pro quo that is required for any negotiation in the region. At stake was the son of an influential American, and tracking him down fell to Levin, who had been involved in a project to nurture young Syrians to take roles in a postwar government. Via that connection, he was often approached to help find missing persons with the assumption that he “might know someone who knew someone who knew someone who could help. The classic Levantine arrangement, in other words.” Finding that chain of someones involved visits to several countries and encounters with a range of characters, from a smooth, charming interlocutor who was quite helpful to a variety of gangsters and strongmen. Levin didn’t find the hoped-for answer to the question of the young man’s disappearance, but he did help effect an unforeseen rescue that, one hopes, will one day change the shape of regional politics. Despite some unnecessary digressions—e.g., the author’s story of his visit to a wealthy racist in the Virginia countryside, one with clear political clout himself, doesn’t add to the primary narrative—every moment that features the fixer named Khalid is worth the price of admission. Although Khalid has plenty of shady connections with the rich and powerful on all sides of the region’s rivalries, he also serves as one of the book’s much-needed moral compasses: “I’m really sorry, Khalid. I have no choice,” Levin protests of a meeting that conflicts with his schedule, to which Khalid replies, “we always have a choice.”

Though sometimes tangential, Levin’s narrative ably depicts the complex interactions of Middle Eastern politics.

Kirkus Reviews