TIDHAR, Lavie. Osama. Hornsea, PS Publishing Ltd., 2011.
8vo., publisher's decorative boards in repeat dustwrapper; decorative endpapers; pp. [xviii], 9-276, [iv]; a fine copy in all respects.
Limited to 100 copies signed by the author. This copy no. 96.
Winner of the 2012 World Fantasy award, Osama tells the story of Joe, a private detective who is hired to locate Mike Longshott, author of the Osama: Vigilante series of pulp novels. While Joe inhabits a alternative reality where there is no tension between East and West, Longshott's novels portray a world torn by a series of terrorist atrocities: 9/11, Dar es Salaam and 7/7. As the detective travels the world in search of the elusive author, besuited agents attempt to impede his progress, and his experiences become increasingly Kafkaesque. "Osama unsettlingly contrasts a safe reality with the horrors of an imaginary world that is in fact our own, and culminates in a finale which calls into question our notions of terrorism and its attribution." The Guardian.
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.
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