The Unknown Terrorist: A Novel [Paperback]

Richard Flanagan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 21, 2008

From the internationally acclaimed author of Gould’s Book of Fish comes an astonishing new novel, a riveting portrayal of a society driven by fear. What would you do if you turned on the television and saw you were the most wanted terrorist in the country? Gina Davies is about to find out when, after a night spent with an attractive stranger, she becomes a prime suspect in the investigation of an attempted terrorist attack. In The Unknown Terrorist, one of the most brilliant writers working in the English language today turns his attention to the most timely of subjects — what our leaders tell us about the threats against us, and how we cope with living in fear. Chilling, impossible to put down, and all too familiar, The Unknown Terrorist is a relentless tour de force that paints a devastating picture of a contemporary society gone haywire, where the ceaseless drumbeat of terror alert levels, newsbreaks, and fear of the unknown pushes a nation ever closer to the breaking point.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A life quickly flames out in Flanagan's firebrand follow-up to 2002's acclaimed Gould's Book of Fish. Gina Davies, a 26-year-old nightclub pole dancer (referred to throughout as "the Doll"), leads a provincial life in Sydney, Australia, spends $2,000 a month on clothes and is given to the occasional racist rant. But after a one-night stand with a man named Tariq, she turns on the TV and learns she's been pegged as the accomplice in an attempted terrorist attack on Sydney's Olympic stadium. She's instantly the most-wanted woman in Australia and the source of a raging tabloid media feeding frenzy led by sleazy TV journalist Richard Cody. The fast-paced narrative builds to a fittingly bloody crescendo, and Flanagan drops astutely cynical observations along the way (the Doll, for instance, "realized that her life was no longer what she made of it, but what others said it was"). A true page-turner as well as a timely, pithy critique of celebrity culture and the politics of fearmongering. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Richard Flanagan's stock-in-trade through four novels (Gould's Book of Fish, Death of a River Guide, Sound of One Hand Clapping) has been intense, often surreal, set pieces. Such disconcerting snapshots drive The Unknown Terrorist to its inevitable conclusion. Flanagan's latest effort turns a jaundiced eye on one city's reaction to 9/11. The result is chilling and plausible. At least one reviewer criticized the book's "simplistic moral"; to be sure, readers rarely doubt where Flanagan stands on the issues at hand. Still, The Unknown Terrorist is a powerful commentary on a society that, the author suggests, gorges itself on paranoia as readily as it seeks truth.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802143547
• ISBN-13: 978-0802143549
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #732,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Kind of Terror, May 19, 2007

By 

Mike Fazey (Perth, Western Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unknown Terrorist: A Novel (Hardcover)

Richard Flanagan's new novel (released in Australia in December 2006) is about terrorism. Not the kind that involves suicide bombings and religious fervour; the kind that involves mass paranoia and the abuse of power. The second kind is the more insidious.

The unknown terrorist of the title is Gina Davies, a young woman from the suburbs, pretty much alone in the world and focused entirely on achieving material dreams. She's a stripper and pole dancer, a pill-popper and, on the whole, rather a shallow person. Not the kind of character you'd normally feel for as a reader. Yet Flanagan succeeds in making us sympathise with her completely, to feel outrage and pity for the monumental injustice she suffers at the hands of the authorities, the media and the society she inhabits.

A chance encounter and a one-night stand with a suspected terrorist (who, as it turns out, probably isn't a terrorist after all) transforms the rather naive Gina into public enemy number one. Frightened, confused and mistrustful of authority, she becomes a fugitive. Fuelled by hysterical media coverage, Gina is hunted down as a dangerous home-grown terrorist. The ending is not happy.

Certainly, The Unknown Terrorist is emotionally gripping. As we follow Gina's mental and physical unravelling, it's very hard to remain detached. It's hard because it's all so absurd. Surely no sane society could put two and two together and get five in such a disastrous, unjust way.

Of course, it's a highly political novel, and as such, its purpose is to arouse, to question, to jolt. It succeeds handsomely in this regard. It's also guilty of being melodramatic at times, and some strands of the storyline are a little too contrived. However, judging a political novel purely on its technical merit would be to miss the point completely. Flanagan has set out to make a powerful statement and has succeeded.

I hope lots of people read it and talk about it. I hope someone makes a film of it. It's not an uplifting book by any means - it's pessimistic and downright depressing, in fact. But it's an important book for our times, such as they are.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard Truths, May 27, 2007

By 

Michael P. Maslanka (dallas, texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Unknown Terrorist: A Novel (Hardcover)

Auden told us that "we must love one another or die." Like a zealous D.A ,Flanagan hammers away on this theme, arguing that we have failed on the first and are now reaping the second. There is no brief for the defense. He drapes his argument on the narrative of the Doll, a stripper whose one night of pleasure with a supposed terrorist leads the cops and the media to treat her as one. An innocent caught up with larger events, bigger trends---the constant fear triggered by 9-11, the maw of the media, ever needing to be fed.
The best parts: Flanagan nails the inner life of a lap dancer and her clients; is pitch perfect on how the media ,on few facts, creates a story, with experts twisting facts to suit the story(the writing of the Big Show on the Doll revealed is savage in its accuracy); illuminates the lies that governments tell for no better reason to keep power for power's sake; is dead on in his erotic descriptions of sex and of stripping.
The worst parts: he introduces a police character late in the novel for no reason other than to show how easy a choice it is to forgo doing the right thing when all the rewards are elsewhere; he plops all sorts of ideas in the book---overwhelming it---we live in a consumer driven society(the Doll loves to shop and read design zines), the government is just not to be trusted but is evil enough to manufacture false terrorist threats,etc; and, worst of all, takes the lazy way out of any narrative jam with unlikely coincidences.
Why a 4? For all its flaws, he writes about things that matter a lot and matter now. He is a truth teller. We need as many as we can get.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, February 13, 2008

By 

M. Miller (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Unknown Terrorist: A Novel (Paperback)

Never having read anything by Richard Flanagan, I picked this up on the strength of the very positive reviews printed on the cover of the paperback edition. What a disappointment! It reads like a slightly elaborated outline for a book. There is much moralizing and a whole lot of bad writing. The characters are poorly developed and one dimensional. Entire sections read like notes a screenwriter might write advising an actor how he should play his character and what his character's motivations are. The prose is awkward and unconvincing. There are pages and pages of "sly" and "ironic" observations with little connection to the characters. In short, the author tells us what we are supposed to think rather than letting us discover these things through the characters' actions and words.

I am sympathetic to the theme of the novel, which is the absurdity of Bush's endless "war on terrorism," and the State's eagerness to compromise basic civil liberties in its hunt for the bad guys. Unfortunately, Flanagan doesn't make me care about the characters.

The Jacket compares Flanagan's effort to le Carre, but a more appropriate comparison is to the most middling of graphic novelists.

Don't waste your time with this drivel.