A tale of a hapless young artist, a truck called Yasmine and an extraordinary journey, Misadventures in the Middle East creates a portrait of the post-9/11 Middle East that transports the reader into the human heart of the region.<BR>Henry Hemming, using art as his passport, travels from the drug-fuelled ski slopes of Iran via the region's mosques, palaces, army barracks, secret beaches, police cells, nightclubs, torture chambers, brothels and artists' studios all the way to Baghdad. From being accused on the one hand of being an Islamic extremist and on the other a British spy, from dancing in a dervish hideaway to a Fourth of July party with GIs in Saddam's Republican Palace, Hemming reveals an alternative Middle East that flies beneath the radar of the nightly news.