ATTA

<b>A disorienting fictionalized portrayal of 9/11 mastermind Mohamed Atta and the meaning of madness.</b><p>Ours is a century of fear. Governments and mass media bombard us with words and images: desert radicals &#147;rogue states&#148; 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.</p><p>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 &#147;Islamic-Oriental city.&#148; 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 &#147;The Whitman of Tikrit&#148;&#151;a radical reimagining of Saddam Hussein's last day before capture&#151;ATTA is a brutal relentless and ultimately fearless corrective to ten years of propaganda and pandering.</p>