“It was already called the cruelest place on earth before the Americans even showed up.”

 

NAKED SAVAGES is a darkly surreal novel about the unintended consequences of trying to alter the course of nature. Set in Ethiopia’s Danakil Desert on the eve of the 1984 famine, former feature film director Tom Desmond attempts to redeem himself following a film set disaster years earlier by attempting a documentary of a vanishing indigenous society, the Afarkils.

 

Blistering heat, balky equipment and a general ignorance of culture and local politics sabotage the project and the crew at every turn. As the world eagerly awaits the film, chaos consumes it. Under excruciating pressure, and eventually competing against another documentary team, Desmond and his crew are forced to concoct more and more schemes, each more outlandish than the last, to not just finish the project but survive the experience.

 

Eventually, Desmond – tormented by the project and his past – realizes his true reason for being in that desert.

 

And it isn’t to make a movie.

 

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"Naked Savages" is published by HJH Media, Richmond, Virginia. Please contact HJHmedia@mail.com for media inquiries

 

Cover illustration and design by Hunter Brumfield @ Tidal Wave Studios.