A former regional daily political editor has described his experiences in war-torn Libya in a new book.

Rory O’Keeffe, formerly of The News, Portsmouth, has penned ‘Toss of a coin: voices from a modern crisis’, which tells the story of those fleeing the fallout of the Arab Spring and Colonel Ghaddafi’s ousting in Libya.

Rory, pictured below, met members of the African and Middle East diaspora in October and November 2011, at Choucha Refugee Camp, Tunisia, which housed thousands of people who became refugees for a second time during Libya’s Civil War.

He then moved to Libya, interviewing residents of the Libyan cities of Sirte, Tripoli and Benghazi, those who fled, those who stayed and those who fought, as they were facing up to the need to rebuild their lives in the new ‘Libya Hora’.

A promotional piece for the book reads: “In their own words, those people describe their experiences, their past, their present, and their hopes for the future.

“What they have left, their perilous journey to Libya and beyond, the Arab Spring, the Libyan Civil War, the causes of each, and what they led to. In short, where we are, and how we got here.

“Touching on almost every conflict in modern African and Middle Eastern history, The Toss of a Coin is an examination of a modern crisis, where it has left Libya, and of two continents, united and divided by history, religion, race and ordinary human aspiration.

“It is also a chance to meet the individuals caught in history’s impersonal march, and read the remarkable stories of how they escaped its jaws, and stayed alive.”