Jarett Kobek

A novella and short story. ATTA [4/5], Whitman of Tikrit [3/5].

We tend to mythologise our villians aswell as our heros. This very much does the opposite. A fictional biography of one of the 911 highjackers, regardless of how far from the truth it might be it certainly left me feeling like the reality must have been as messy.
It approaches the subject with neither reverence nor sarcasm and shows a sad, complicated, venal, dillusional and above all ordinary group of people, who are also terrorists.
On occasions when you see how other people view our protagonist it reminded me of Taxi Driver or something similar, this guy has zero social skills.

Overall if your hesitant to read because of the subject matter you really don't need to be. Lot of different ideas and aspects to this but the one thing it does well above all others is reducing some villians to the very ordinary and messy humans they undoubtably were.
And the book throws in some Saddam Hussein too in the short story.… (altro)