The overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi was a defining moment of the early twenty-first century. Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor for Channel 4 News, was an eyewitness to the revolution. In Sandstorm, she traces the history of Gaddafi's strange regime from its beginnings - when he had looks, charisma and popular appeal, and posed as a kind of socialist revolutionary - to the massacre at Abu Salim prison, and the paranoid, corrupt final state. This is the Libyan revolution as it was made and lived; a narrative of how the people overcame fear and disillusionment to find the strength to rebel against years of terror and tragedy.