Author event with Ben Macintryre

Parnassus Books is pleased to present an evening with Ben Macintryre to celebrate his new book, The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World.

This ticketed event will begin at 6:30 PM on Friday, September 27th, at Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pk, suite 14, Nashville, TN.

Ticketing:

Each ticket is $35.00 and includes one general admission seat and one signed copy of The Siege. There will be a signing line following the event where Ben will personalize your book.

Additional copies of The Siege, and other books by Ben MacIntyre, will be available for sale at the event while supplies last.

Parking:

There is ample, free parking in front of the store, as well as the lot and garage behind the store.

About the book:

A thrilling tick-tock recounting one of the most harrowing hostage situations and daring rescue attempts of our time--from true-life espionage master and New York Times bestselling author of Operation Mincemeat and The Spy and the Traitor Ben Macintyre.

As the American hostage crisis in Iran boiled into its seventh month in the spring of 1980, six heavily armed gunman barged into the Iranian embassy in London, taking twenty-six hostages. What followed over the next six days was an increasingly tense standoff, one that threatened at any moment to spill into a bloodbath.

Policeman Trevor Lock was supposed to have gone to the theater that night. Instead, he found himself overpowered and whisked into the embassy. The terrorists never noticed the gun hidden in his jacket. The drama that ensued would force him to find reserves of courage he didn't know he had. The gunmen themselves were hardly one-dimensional--all Arabs, some highly educated, who hoped to force Britain to take their side in their independence battle against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Behind the scenes lurked the brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had bankrolled the whole affair as a salvo against Iran.

As police negotiators pressed the gunmen, rival protestors clashed violently outside the embassy, and as MI6 and the CIA scrambled for intelligence, Britain's special forces strike team, the SAS, laid plans for a dangerous rescue mission. Inside, Lock and his fellow hostages used all the cunning they possessed to outwit and outflank their captors. Finally, on the sixth day, after the terrorists executed the embassy press attaché and dumped his body on the front doorstep, the SAS raid began, sparking a deadly high-stakes climax.

A story of ordinary men and women under immense pressure, The Siege takes readers minute-by-thrilling-minute through an event that would echo across the next two decades and provide a direct historical link to the tragedy on 9/11. Drawing on exclusive interviews and a wealth of never-before-seen files, Macintyre brilliantly reconstructs a week in which every day minted a new hero and every second spelled the potential for doom.

About the author:
Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (UK) and the bestselling author of Agent Sonya, The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, Rogue Heroes, and Prisoners of the Castle, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike, Nashville, United States