Taken: A Novel

"Absolutely terrifying." -- Benjamin Kerstein, author of The Forsaken

Prize-winning author and journalist Michael J. Totten’s debut novel features a fictional version of author and journalist Michael J. Totten who is taken from his home in the night by terrorists and hauled bound and gagged to a remote house in the wilderness. So begins a harrowing journey across three states with a ruthless band of killers and sadists, and after all escape attempts fail, Totten faces a terrible question: what if the only way out is to join them?

Praise for The Road to Fatima Gate

“It is extremely rare to read such an accurate account of anything to which one was oneself a witness.” Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great

“Totten…practices journalism in the tradition of Orwell: morally imaginative, partisan in the best sense of the word, and delivered in crackling, rapid-fire prose befitting the violent realities it depicts.” - Sohrab Ahmari, Commentary

Praise for Where the West Ends

“Of all the journalists now alive and writing in English, there are few whose reporting interests me more than Michael J. Totten’s—in fact, none that I can think of offhand. I spent days thinking about Where the West Ends, deeply affected by the eerie melancholy it evokes and the questions it raises about the borderlands of old empires and the places people don’t visit for pleasure.” – Claire Berlinski, author of Menace in Europe