(And thereby brings in a Swiftian touch of humor to his cultural critique.) In between the chapters, we get bits of history from an alternate Wikipedia, which helps to fill in the blanks. Ruff even brings in an alternate version of LOLcats. This book is packed with historical and cultural references. Our central lead, Mustafa al Baghdadi, starts to suspect that there’s something wrong with his reality. Various main and supporting characters start getting flashes, in dreams or during spells of vertigo, of another reality, where the plane attacks took place in New York, where Saddam Hussein was the dictator of Iraq, where David Koresh died in Waco, where Osama bin Ladin was the head of al Qaeda. If Ruff had stopped here, I might still have been satisfied with the story anyway. They’re chasing down American suicide bombers in Baghdad when they get the news of planes crashing into their Twin Towers. This book was so good that I read it in an entire afternoon.Īfter a short prologue, we are introduced to our trio of protagonists, all agents of Homeland Security. The United States is, in version, a fractured collection of countries ruled by various religious ideologues. I have to say, I’ve been despairing of good satire for a long time. It becomes 11/9 and the target was the Twin Towers in Baghdad in the United Arab States. In The Mirage we get to see 9/11 from the rabbit hole. Emily Dickinson wrote “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” Matt Ruff tells the truth inverted.
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