It is our intent and purpose to foster and encourage in-depth discussion about all things related to books, authors, genres or publishing in a safe, supportive environment. Subreddit Rules - Message the mods - Related Subs AMA Info The FAQ The Wiki Join in the Weekly "What Are You Reading?" Thread!.Check out the Weekly Recommendation Thread.I hate to give away the solution to the mystery, but I will say that everything wraps up in a gloriously satisfying conclusion. It also shows just how incompatible fanatical, fundamentalist religion is with peace.Īs the story unfolds, Mustafa follows the clues of this other reality (our reality) to the Balkanized America and back. It’s just playing into a long tradition of an eye for an eye until everyone is blind. In this case, it’s that you can’t just bomb people back to the stone age, set up a government, and walk away–especially not when it comes to the Middle East. It strips away baggage and blinkers alike and helps you to see what the real problem is. But it gets you to look at a situation in a different way.
It might make you laugh along the way (a great satire will, anyway). The thing about good satire is that it tells you a truth. I had to keep running to the real Wikipedia to brush up on the real history. (And thereby brings in a Swiftian touch of humor to his cultural critique.) In between the chapters, we get bits of history from an alternate Wikipedia, which helps to fill in the blanks.
Ruff even brings in an alternate version of LOLcats. This book is packed with historical and cultural references. Our central lead, Mustafa al Baghdadi, starts to suspect that there’s something wrong with his reality. Various main and supporting characters start getting flashes, in dreams or during spells of vertigo, of another reality, where the plane attacks took place in New York, where Saddam Hussein was the dictator of Iraq, where David Koresh died in Waco, where Osama bin Ladin was the head of al Qaeda. If Ruff had stopped here, I might still have been satisfied with the story anyway. They’re chasing down American suicide bombers in Baghdad when they get the news of planes crashing into their Twin Towers. This book was so good that I read it in an entire afternoon.Īfter a short prologue, we are introduced to our trio of protagonists, all agents of Homeland Security. The United States is, in version, a fractured collection of countries ruled by various religious ideologues. I have to say, I’ve been despairing of good satire for a long time. It becomes 11/9 and the target was the Twin Towers in Baghdad in the United Arab States. In The Mirage we get to see 9/11 from the rabbit hole. Emily Dickinson wrote “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” Matt Ruff tells the truth inverted.
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