The President's Daughter: A Thriller

The President’s Daughter is set against a backdrop of real-world geopolitical issues, grounding its fictional plot in contemporary international conflicts. The opening chapters take place in post-Muammar Gaddafi Libya, a nation that descended into a prolonged civil war following the 2011 overthrow of Gaddafi, Libya’s authoritarian dictator. Gaddafi ruled Libya for more than four decades, from 1979 to his overthrow and killing in 2011. Though Gaddafi’s regime improved quality of life for many Libyans—for instance by providing universal health care and improving food security—the regime also stifled free expression, persecuted ethnic minorities (including the Amazigh people who figure in the plot of The President’s Daughter), and frequently carried out brutal public executions of political dissidents with little due process. His death paved the way for a more democratic Libya, but it also created a climate of political instability that turned the country into a haven for extremist organizations. The novel reflects this reality by describing Libya as a “fractured and squabbling nation, a perfect place to incubate or shelter terrorists” (4). The US military raid on the fictional terrorist Asim Al-Asheed occurs in the Nafusa Mountains, a real region in northwestern Libya, and the novel explicitly compares the fictional Al-Asheed to real-world terrorist leaders Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, both of whom were killed in covert US military operations like the one depicted in the novel. 

The novel also incorporates tensions surrounding China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a massive global infrastructure strategy launched in 2013. While China officially frames the BRI as a vehicle for economic partnership, many Western analysts, including those at institutions like the Council on Foreign Relations, view it as a tool for expanding China’s strategic influence. The text explicitly dramatizes this concern when a character recalls a classified briefing that outlined China’s goal of “securing resources, allies, and possible future military bases” (6). This detail anchors the thriller’s plot in the complex and often contentious dynamics of modern global power competition.