Atta
  • Published:
    Aug-2011
  • Formats:
    Print
  • Main Genre:
    General Fiction
  • Pages:
    200
  • Age Level:
    22 & up
  • Purchase:
  • Share:

A disorienting fictionalized portrayal of 9/11 mastermind Mohamed Atta and the meaning of madness.

Ours is a century of fear. Governments and mass media bombard us with words and images: desert radicals, “rogue states,” 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.

In the summer of 1999, Mohamed Atta defended a master's thesis that critiqued the introduction of Western-style skyscrapers in the Middle East and called for the return of the “Islamic-Oriental city.” Using this as a departure point, Jarett Kobek'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 history's great villains, Kobek demonstrates the need for a new understanding of global terrorism. Joined in this volume by a second work, “The Whitman of Tikrit”―a radical reimagining of Saddam Hussein's last day before capture―ATTA is a brutal, relentless, and ultimately fearless corrective to ten years of propaganda and pandering.

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EDITIONS
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    •  
    • Aug-2011
    • Semiotext(e)
    • Trade Paperback
    • ISBN: 1584351063
    • ISBN13: 9781584351061



View the Complete Jarett Kobek Book List