Soldier for a Summer: One Man's Journey from Dublin to the Frontline of the Libyan Uprising - Tapa blanda

Housam 'Sam' Najjair was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a Libyan father. In June 2011, as his father's home country was being torn apart by civil war, he left Ireland on a one-way ticket to Tunisia, crossing into war-torn Libya, to join the uprising against the dictator Gaddafi. Soldier for a Summer charts his journey - from his arrival into Libya to training in the Western Mountains for twelve weeks before advancing on Tripoli. On 20 August 2011, Sam and the now famous Tripoli Brigade - a unit of the National Liberation Army of Libya - were the first revolutionaries to enter the city, and subsequently secure it and Martyrs' Square. From meeting representatives of NATO to covert operatives, arms deals, the death of his close friend and colleague, safe-houses and a captured girl sniper, this is the astounding story of how a young Irish-Libyan revolutionary became a battlefield commander of a unit of the National Liberation Army of Libya - an unforgettable account of a single season that liberated a country and transformed a young man.

Housam 'Sam' Najjair was born and grew up in the suburbs of Dublin. His father came to Ireland from Tripoli as a student in the 1970s, where he met and married Sam's mother Joanna Golden, daughter of Geoffrey Golden and Maire O'Donnell, two famous Abbey Theatre actors. From the age of nine, Sam lived with his family in Libya for three years, before returning to Ireland. By sixteen, he had moved out of home, having been expelled from school. He worked in restaurants and in the Liberty Market and, at nineteen, took over a small restaurant in Dublin city before returning to Tripoli for two years. There, he worked for a diamond jeweller and in a travel agency that specialised in desert and mountain trips. He returned to Dublin at the age of twenty-one and worked in construction for several years before his fateful decision to fight against Gaddafi and help in the liberation of Libya.