Osama [Kindle Edition]

Lavie Tidhar (Author)

Book Description

Lavie Tidhar was in Dar-es-Salaam during the American embassy bombings in 1998, and stayed in the same hotel as the Al Qaeda operatives in Nairobi. Since then he and his now-wife have narrowly avoided both the 2005 King’s Cross and 2004 Sinai attacks—experiences that led first to his memorable short story “My Travels with Al-Qaeda” and later to the creation of Osama.

“In a world without global terrorism Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante...”

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Not a writer to mess around with half measures ... brings to mind Philip K Dick's seminal science fiction novel The Man in the High Castle." - The Guardian

"Bears comparison with the best of Philip K Dick's paranoid, alternate-history fantasies. It's beautifully written and undeniably powerful." - The Financial Times

"Intensely moving." - Interzone

"A novel about the power of fantasy, about the proximity of dreams and reality, about ghost people and ghost realities. Lavie Tidhar has written a fine, striking, memorable piece of fiction here, one that deserves to be widely read." - Adam Roberts

"A provocative and fast moving tale that raises good questions not only about the heritage of Al Qaeda, but about the slippage between reality and sensational fiction that sometimes seems to define our own confused and contorted experience of the last couple of decades." - Locus

"A powerful and disturbing political fantasy by a talent who deserves the attention of all serious readers." - Strange Horizons

"Mind bending . . . This book will shake you. It left our reviewer in a hazy nightmare state, left in a waking dream that rattled him for hours. Literally, the complex construction of Osama and rekindled intense collective PTSD of 9/11 woke our reviewer from his sleep." - Boston Book Bums.

Product Details

• File Size: 371 KB
• Print Length: 276 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: PS Publishing Ltd (September 21, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005OSXJO2
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #269,832 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Smoke, mirrors, and shades of gray October 28, 2012

By DJA

Format:Hardcover

It seems that this book has received a considerable number of accolades from non-Amazon reviewers. For me, reading Tidhar's work was like plodding through a fog-enshrouded swamp without a compass. I would have rated it a "one star," except for the final 75 pages, which finally "picked up the pace." Like most of the novel itself, I wasn't sure if the preface, listing two pages of supposed praise for this "provocative and fast-moving tale," were real or imagined.

I would characterize OSAMA as more of an "alternate reality" essay than an "alternate history." At its conclusion, it leaves many unanswered questions. "Joe" (the protagonist) is often described by the other characters as a "refugee," a "ghost," or a "fuzzy-wuzzy." Has Joe died as a result of a terrorist bombing in our "real" world? Is he now trapped between our world and a reality in which Osama bin Laden is only a persona appearing in under-the-counter pulp fiction? Or is Joe simply immersed in an opium-filled hallucination? (The cover of the book and pages between chapters depict apparent cigarette or pipe smoke.)

On the plus side, Tidhar penned several thought-provoking sections. I particularly liked the scene in which Joe, wandering though a strange house, spots a large picture frame titled TIME'S MAN OF THE YEAR, and sees an image of himself. It turns out that the frame outlines a mirror, and Joe simply gazes into his own reflection.

Unfortunately, the author's constant use of short, choppy sentences and agonizingly poor similes and metaphors makes OSAMA difficult to read. A few examples are listed below:

"The girl closed the book and laid it back down on the desk, carefully, as if handling a valuable object. 'Do you think so?' she said. He didn't know what to answer her. He remained silent. She remained standing. They looked at each other and he wondered what she saw. Her fingers were quite long and thin. Her ears were a little pointy. At last, she said, 'I want you to find him,' and her fingers caressed the book."

"The point of transit was like the epicentre of two opposing forces, like the equilibrium found when an equal pull is exerted on a body from all directions."

Before picking up this novel, be forewarned that it is dark and dismal. It's like an apocalyptic ALICE IN WONDERLAND or ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, except in this case, the rabbit hole and mirror contain far less illumination, and Alice never finds her way out.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly Haunting October 9, 2012

By James Mowry

Format:Kindle Edition

Tidhar, an Israeli writer, has written a beautiful and haunting book--but to try to describe it without revealing too much of its mysterious heart is quite a task. So let me start by saying it is extremely well-written and brilliantly evokes each of the places it takes place: Vientiane, Laos; Paris; New York; and finally, Kabul. Ostensibly, it is the story of a detective (in the Raymond Chandler mode) hired by a mysterious woman to track down a writer named Mike Longshott, who has written a series of books about Osama Bin Laden, Vigilante. It soon becomes clear, however, that in the detective's world, Osama Bin Laden, the events of 9/11, and a few significant chunks of history don't exist. But to pigeonhole this book as just an alternate history or science fiction would be missing the point. Osama isn't as neat and tidy as such fictions tend to be. Tidhar blends the real and the unreal together in such a way that truth and fiction blur into a marvelous new synthesis that tells us something about both. It succeeds, where other attempts such as China Mieville's THE CITY AND THE CITY largely fail, because of the depth of feeling at the book's center and because the detective is so well-drawn and interesting, even when stumbling blindly in search of his next clue. OSAMA achieves the near-impossible--serious escapist fiction, or maybe vice-versa? Just read it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A noirish mind trip January 3, 2013

By Ryan

Format:Hardcover

Meet Joe, an archetypal low-rent private detective living in Southeast Asia. Except, in Joe's world, 9-11 and other terrorist attacks never took place. Instead, they're just plot elements in a semi-popular series of pulp novels called "Osama bin Laden, Vigilante", which even has a yearly fan convention devoted to it.

This matters to Joe because a mysterious woman appears at his office and hires him to track down the author of those same novels. Soon, as he travels the world, he finds himself running into people who don't quite seem to belong. Then he meets people who don't want him investigating further. And then things start to get odd. Philip K. Dick comparisons seem apt, though I was also reminded of China Mieville's City and the City and the mind-bending story in the computer game Braid.

This is, without question, a novel whose meaning hides in its obliqueness and blurring of reality. Who is Joe, exactly? Who are the ghostlike "refugees"? What is the connection between his world and ours? Tidhar offers hints, but no certain answers. I thought it was a stroke of brilliance that Osama bin Laden himself becomes an anti-presence in the story. Made imaginary in Joe's world, he becomes more visible as what he really is in ours: a omnipresent icon that haunts without having any real definition or connection to what the actual bin Laden was. The symbolism is open to interpretation, but, to me, it expressed the ultimate elusiveness of either escape or understanding in the endless feedback of the human response to terrorism.

Of course, open-ended, strange-loopy novels aren't the sort of thing that speaks to every reader (at least, not without chemical enhancement), but this one hit most of the right notes with me. I liked the audacity of Tidhar's vision and the tight, noir-ish, slightly hallucinatory writing. And it's not a long book.

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.