An incredible political thriller that’s also a primer on current Middle Eastern conflicts.
This debut novel presents an alternate portrait of the Middle East after Osama bin Laden’s death, while also stressing the need to bridge interfaith gaps.
In November 2011, Osama bin Laden is dead and the terrorist organization al-Qaida is in tatters. President Barack Obama’s first term closes with plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. However, the region still crawls with military contractors, including companies like the Chester Brampton Group, which run wars like for-profit schemes. Against this backdrop, three vital players emerge who have the potential to positively influence the next phase of Islam. The first is the exiled Ayatollah Arman Rastani, a Georgetown University professor who fled Iran after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolution. Rastani is slandered relentlessly as a spy and a spiritual inspiration for Iranian terrorists, and he’s kidnapped to London for interrogation. Then there’s Aleksandr Kozhevnikov, a former Spetsnaz (special forces) operative, who’s assigned by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service to help dismantle American contractors’ systematic manipulation of Middle Eastern resources. Finally, there’s Atamar “The Wolf” Anagul, a retired al-Qaida strategist who’s sought by his former terrorist allies, who wish to obliterate all aspects of moderate Islam—including Rastani. When a high-profile American visitor is killed near the United Nations’ fortified Green Zone, the lives of these three determined men fatefully intersect. In her terrifying but optimistic novel, Griffith-Dickson explores the reality of post-Osama bin Laden global events and speculates on how the creation of the Islamic State terrorist group might have been prevented; at one point, for example, Atamar says, “the only way to outmanoeuvre them is to build a pan-Islamic movement in Iraq.” The author offers a sweeping panorama that surrounds readers with many viewpoints on the saga of modern Islam, including those of British teenagers descending into terrorism and that of Rastani, who believes that one must “Move all things by love, with your desire, and that is how you transform evil into good, and goodness into perfection.” This novel is for anyone who’d like to see a future that’s built by discussion and compassion, rather than violence.
An incredible political thriller that’s also a primer on current Middle Eastern conflicts.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9576046-2-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Ismo Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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