Between Extremes
In 1986 Brian Keenan and John McCarthy were forced to take a journey without maps. For the next four years they were incarcerated in a Lebanese dungeon. From the blank outlook of a tiny cell, with only each other and a few volumes of an ancient American encyclopaedia to sustain them, they could only wander the wide open spaces of their imagination. To displace the ugly confines of their existence, they envisaged walking in the High Andes and across the wastes of Patagonia.
Five years after their return Brian and John chose to travel together again to see how the reality of Chile matched their imagination and to revisit their past experiences. They journeyed by every means available through vast empty deserts, verdant plains and barren tundra. Between Extremes is the story of that journey which once more found them far from home, in an unfamiliar landscape, but which for the first time allowed them to live by their own rules.
Biography for John McCarthy
As a journalist in television news John McCarthy was sent on his first foreign assignment to Beirut in 1986 aged twenty-nine. His career was abruptly cut short by militiamen who kidnapped and held him captive for five and half years.
Since his release he has written four books - Some Other Rainbow (with Jill Morrell), about his hostage years, Island Race (with Sandi Toksvig), an account of their circumnavigation of Britain, and Between Extremes (with Brian Keenan), a journey through Chile and his latest, A Ghost Upon Your Path.
John McCarthy continues to work in both radio and television.
Biography for Brian Keenan
Brian Keenan is a writer and poet. AN EVIL CRADLING is the story of his four years' captivity in Beirut and is recognized as a non-fiction classic. He is also the author of a travel book, BETWEEN EXTREMES with John McCarthy, and a novel, TULLOUGH.