/lit/ - Literature

any good recommendations for books on the war on terror?
ive been obsessed with reading articles on stuff like operation red dawn and operation neptunes trident so anything around that area would be great

The Thousand and One Nights

An especially transgressive chapter (because it humanizes Atta) occurs when he dates Amal. In the story, Atta visits Amal while researching in Aleppo. It doesn't work out, but Atta is nevertheless captivated by her storytelling ability. Amal seems to recount a particular episode from the Thousand and One Nights (I wonder if it is a genuine one), a very germane literary device from Kobek at this point, which isn't hackneyed in its execution. The point here is not the story-within-the-story, its authentic literary status (as an episode from the 1001 Nights), although this is "authenticity" is a legitimate object of study. In the story itself, Atta is fascinated by the simple fact of Amal's womanhood. But his principles win out, and he never returns. The 1001 Nights are not continued for a second.

Whitman

In the same volume of the OP, a likewise part-imaginary-part-factual short story follows: "The Whitman of Tikrit", which depicts the capture of Saddam Hussein during the Iraq War. The temporal placement of the smaller story after the major novella is appropriate.

Here, Hussein amuses himself as well as he can, cursing both Bushes, Rumsfeld, and Bin Laden, in the time before his capture. A little mock trial is made of insects at one point, and Hussein refrains from shooting his helper, since the helper displays absolutly no disloyalty when tested. Hussein's own literary career is considered against Walt Whitman; Americans presented him with a copy of Leaves of Grass at one earlier point, which he loved so much that he had drawn and quartered an assistant who had the temerity to inform him that Whitman was a homosexual.

In the end, Hussein is caught, having himself a rather long Whitman beard. "One of the soldiers turns towards his comrades. In the moment before violence, the light shows the Tyrant a face and he recognizes it. It is American, one of the roughs, disorderly and fleshy."