Book Description
It treats the fear and loathing of terrorism only in one novel, head on, in an account of Londoners trapped in a bar during a bombscare. Though there is no mention of Al Qaeda, it is the background of the author that makes one think that the fear is post 9/11.
It's no wonder as the ambitions of the novels are large. The first and title novel charts the downfall of a stereotypical working-class-made-good-under-Thatcher yuppie as he begins to learn what British society lost as it gained. The third is about Londoners' - and even Los Angeles-residents' - perplexing relationship with property. The final novel, entitled, "Good Morning, Britain" examines the travails of an ingénue at a big television station, learning and prospering as he produces news for the populace. It should be noted that Rattansi produced for the BBC's Today programme which was caught up in the Weapons of Mass Destruction fiasco when Andrew Gilligan reported that the British government has "sexed up" a dossier to persuade the UK parliament to vote for the Iraq War.
Rattansi worked on Al Jazeera's flagship programme, "Top Secret" and given the Arabic language station's ability to source material where no media outlet has contacts, one can only imagine what assignments the author must have undertaken. He won a Sony Award for his outstanding contribution to media in 2002, shortly after setting up an international 24 hour news station in the Middle East. The quartet begins with a reflection by one of the female characters in the book, the love of the first novel's protagonist, as she holidays in the Maldives ahead of the Asian Tsunami. It is when you imagine the scope of such a book, its themes, its politics and its emotional range allied to the quality of writing which impressed so many of Britain's arbiters of literary prowess, that you begin to understand what an event publication of "The Dream of the Decade - The London Novels" really is.
