Lavie Tidhar - Osama

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Osama: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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‘The author of
is young, ambitious, skilled and original.
is an ingenious inversion of modern history: Osama bin Laden is the central character in a string of pulp novels allegedly written by one Mike Longschott. The terrorist crimes exist, in this novel, in a different realm… excellent, evocative and atmospheric.’
— Award-winning novelist and author of
Christopher Priest ‘An awesome book, dark, twisty alt-universe terrorist noir.’
— Lauren Beukes, author of
‘Bears comparison with the best of Philip K Dick’s paranoid, alternate-history fantasies. It’s beautifully written and undeniably powerful.’

‘A strange, melancholy and moving reflection, torquing politics with the fantastic, and vice virtuosically versa.’
— best selling author China Miéville ‘Not a writer to mess around with half measures…brings to mind Philip K Dick’s seminal science fiction novel The Man in the High Castle.’

‘The author is young, ambitious, skilled and original. Osama is an ingenious inversion of modern history...excellent, evocative and atmospheric.’
— best selling author Christopher Priest
In a alternate world without global terrorism Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante… Chased by unknown assailants, Joe’s identity slowly fragments as he discovers the shadowy world of the refugees, ghostly entities haunting the world in which he lives. Where do they come from? And what do they want?
Lavie Tidhar Osama 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 London, King’s Cross and 2004 Sinai attacks—experiences that led to the creation of In a alternate world without global terrorism Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante…
Joe’s quest to find the man takes him across the world, from the backwaters of Asia to the European Capitals of Paris and London, and as the mystery deepens around him there is one question he is trying hard not to ask: who is he, really, and how much of the books are fiction? Chased by unknown assailants, Joe’s identity slowly fragments as he discovers the shadowy world of the refugees, ghostly entities haunting the world in which he lives. Where do they come from? And what do they want? Joe knows how the story should end, but even he is not ready for the truths he’ll find in New York and, finally, on top a quiet hill above Kabul—nor for the choice he will at last have to make…
In
, Lavie Tidhar brilliantly delves into the post-9/11 global subconscious, mixing together elements of film noir, non-fiction, alternative history and international thriller to create an unsettling—yet utterly compelling—portrayal of our times.
WINNER OF THE 2012 WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL.

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Joe took a last sip from his coffee. There was nothing left at the bottom but foam. The piped music had changed, jazz giving way to a soulful tune he recognised but didn’t know from where. He put out the cigarette. A small girl went past outside holding a teddy-bear. A teenaged student in pressed black trousers and a pressed white shirt went past carrying books. Two teenage girls went past eating ice-creams, and when the boy in the white shirt saw them he smiled, and the girls smiled back, and they went off together. The wordless song playing in the air niggled at Joe, that persistent sense of knowing without quite putting a name to things, which always annoyed him. He watched the skies above the buildings and saw that they were changing.

It was a minute darkening, a momentary dimming of the light, and as he watched he saw a piece of paper on the ground outside move of its own accord, leap into the air and take off, like a dirty-white butterfly, and he knew the rains were coming.

He paid, and stepped through the doors outside, and he could smell the change in the air. The old lady selling English primers in the shop opposite looked up too, and he could see on her face the same longing that he recognised, for just a moment, in himself. Then he strode down the car park, his boots crunching gravel as he walked, and he whistled a tune. It was only when he was almost outside his office that he realised it was an old Dooley Wilson song, from another smoky café, in another time and place.

a scattering cloud of geckos

——

As he walked along the wide, shady avenues of downtown Vientiane, Joe was struck again by the Japanese influence on the cityscape. Amongst the low-lying, traditional buildings along Lan Xang avenue, for instance, there emerged the half-completed shell of the new Kobayashi Bank building, a towering, glass and chrome egg visible from far in the distance, an alien entity in this sedate, regal environment. Against the wall of a shop whose outdoors stalls were heaped with pineapples and watermelons and lychees, above the head of the brown-skinned proprietor (a Hmong, Joe judged) who was sitting in the shade rolling a cigarette, there was a faded poster showing the Lao king and the Japanese emperor bowing to each other respectfully, below the words Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere . You could see Japan in the cars, and in the blare of music that came through tinny speakers here and there, and in the notices for language schools that promised Number One Nippon, English Tuition, For Your and Your Children’s Future .

He crossed Lan Xang and soon came within sight of That Dam, the black stupa rising against the sky like a reminder of long-gone wars. Once it had been coated in gold, and shone in the light, but the gold had been stripped, by Thai or Burmese invaders, no one was quite sure anymore, and never replaced. Grass grew through the cracks in the stone of the steps. It was a peaceful place; he had always liked it.

He reached the dilapidated building on the corner. There was a spirit house outside, with miniature figurines standing in its courtyard, and offerings of rice whisky and food, and a burning incense stick. He paused by it for a moment, looking at it vaguely, then stepped into the hallway, which was cool and dusty and dark. He climbed up the steps, noticing the single light-bulb had burnt again. The building was quiet. There was a noodle soup place open to the street on the ground floor, but hardly anyone ever ate there. There was also a second-hand bookshop, but it wouldn’t be open for a while; not until Alfred, its proprietor, could shake off the previous night’s effects and convince himself to open up for business, which was unlikely to happen before noon.

Joe opened the door to his office and stepped through, surveying the room as he did every time he entered. The windows, a little grimy, showed rooftops and wide open skies above the Mekong. His desk was plain wood, unvarnished, with a much-folded square piece of paper balancing one of its legs. On the table scattered papers, a paperweight in the shape of an elephant, a dull-coloured metal letter opener, a desk-lamp, and an ashtray made of a polished coconut shell. Ash and two cigarette stubs from the day before were still sitting in the ashtray, and he made a mental note to have a word with the cleaning-lady, though it never seemed to make a difference. There was no phone on the desk. In the top drawer was a Thai knockoff of a Smith & Wesson .38, illegal, and a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label, half-empty or half-full, depending.

Also in the room were: a wastepaper basket, woven from bamboo, and like the ashtray unemptied; a metal filing cabinet, empty but for a pair of scuffed black shoes two sizes too small for Joe, which were the only effects left behind by the office’s previous occupant; a solitary bookshelf; on the wall, a small painting showing a burning field, the flowers crimson, the smoke coiling across the canvas in jagged lines of white and grey, the figure of a man blurred in the distance, his face hidden behind the smoke; three chairs, one behind the desk, two before it; in one corner, a potted plant that had long since passed away.

It felt like home. As he stepped fully through, half-closing the door behind him, he startled a small gecko on the wall. As the gecko shot up other geckos appeared, and for a moment it seemed to Joe like an explosion, the geckos racing away from its source — which was him. He smiled, and went to his desk, and sat down, putting the paperback on his desk. He shared his office with no one but the geckos. Every time he came in it seemed to him that there were more of them. They would hide unseen in corners, and he would startle them each time with the opening of a drawer, with the legs of a chair dragging across the floor, and they would scuttle away. Once, he came across a solitary gecko squatting by the wastepaper basket. Its left front leg had been hurt, and it was motionless for so long that Joe had thought it dead. He wondered what happened to it — did it get in a fight with another of its kind? He never found out. Later, when he looked again, the gecko had moved: the last Joe saw of it the gecko was crawling slowly through the gap under the door, until finally the tip of its tail disappeared and the wounded gecko was through, passing beyond the safety of the office into the corridor beyond.

Joe went around the desk and sat down. He thought of lighting a cigarette and decided against it. He turned the chair to the window and stared outside. The skies were clouding over, and he could smell the oncoming rain.

contour of a woman through the rain

——

The rain fell down all at once. In the distance thunder broke into shards of sound and exploded in the vast open skies above the Mekong, and lightning flashed blue against grey. Joe stared out of the window, watching a barefoot child run through the puddles, a large green leaf, as large as a serving-tray, held above his head against the rain. The air was humid and smelled of vegetation and earth, and Joe knew that later, in the night, the snails would come out and glide across the road like sedate locomotives, leaving their rails behind them as they passed, and that the frogs would be luxuriating in the pools that were, to them, grand palaces of water. A burst of song came and went on the wind, bookended by static. A solitary bird flew high overhead, swooped and disappeared out of sight, little more than a black dot on the horizon.

It was when the rain had began to ease, and sunlight streamed down through the fresh incisions in the cloud cover, that he first saw her. She was crossing the road, head bent, intent on the path she was following. There was no traffic. Light rain fell and sunlight came through behind her, but he couldn’t see her face. For a moment it seemed to him the whole world was still, a frozen backdrop, the moving girl the only living thing inhabiting it. Then the clouds closed overhead and the girl was gone, and Joe sighed, and turned away from the window and reached for his cigarettes.

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