ATTA

Plt;bPgt;A disorienting fictionalized portrayal of 9⁄11 mastermind Mohamed Atta and the meaning of madness.Plt;/bPgt;Plt;pPgt;Ours is a century of fear. Governments and mass media bombard us with words and images: desert radicals, P#8220;rogue states,P#8221; jihadists, WMDs, existential enemies of freedom. We labor beneath myths that neither address nor describe the present situation, monstrous deceptions produced by a sound bite society. There is no reckoning of actuality, no understanding of the individual lives that inaugurated this echo chamber.Plt;/pPgt;Plt;pPgt;In the summer of 1999, Mohamed Atta defended a masterP#39;s thesis that critiqued the introduction of Western-style skyscrapers in the Middle East and called for the return of the P#8220;Islamic-Oriental city.P#8221; Using this as a departure point, Jarett KobekP#39;s novel ATTA offers a fictionalized psychedelic biography of Mohamed Atta that circles around a simple question: what if 9⁄11 was as much a matter of architectural criticism as religious terrorism? Following the development of a socially awkward boy into one of historyP#39;s great villains, Kobek demonstrates the need for a new understanding of global terrorism. Joined in this volume by a second work, P#8220;The Whitman of TikritP#8221;P#8212;a radical reimagining of Saddam HusseinP#39;s last day before captureP#8212;ATTA is a brutal, relentless, and ultimately fearless corrective to ten years of propaganda and pandering.Plt;/pPgt;