Title: The Unknown Terrorist
Author: Richard Flanagan
Rating:
4 stars out of 5Publisher: Grove Press
Copyright: 2006
Pages: 325
Keywords: fiction
Reading period: 29 April-4 May, 2008
A Sydney pole dancer known as ‘the Doll’
has a one-night stand with a Muslim.
The next day she's the subject of a massive witchhunt
as a suspected terrorist.
After 9/11, the Bali bombings, and the Iraq war,
Australians are ripe for the fearmongering of the media.
An escalating cycle of hype and fear and ever more lurid headlines
plunges the Doll into a waking nightmare from which she cannot escape.
This novel indicts everyone:
the ordinary people who unthinkingly condone events;
the security forces with their own agenda;
and most of all, the media who seize on a good story
without caring about the truth.
It's all too plausible, alas.