The Unknown Terrorist
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From the winner of the Man Booker Prize. 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.
After spending a night with an attractive stranger, she has become a prime suspect in the investigation of an attempted terrorist attack. When police find three unexploded bombs at a stadium and her enigmatic lover suddenly goes missing, Gina spends five days on the run and witnesses every truth of her life twisted into a betrayal.
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 one woman ever closer to breaking point.
This is an extraordinary achievement, chilling, impossible to put down, and all too familiar.
'A masterpiece' -- Washington Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
