LOS ANGELES/EWORLDWIRE/Jan. 10, 2006 --- For the first time, a journalist from Al Jazeera has published a work of fiction - though the Arabic television station's detractors might have it another way. The Dream of the Decade, a quartet of novels, is out in one volume published by U.S. publisher, Booksurge. It's a big tome that charts the lives of Londoners when the gaps between rich and poor are inexorably rising, even as the lives of the rich are becoming fabulously wealthy.
Afshin Rattansi's novel 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.
The book itself is praised by Dan Franklin, publisher of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan who says that Rattansi "captures the atmosphere of the late 1980s." Christopher MacLehose, the publisher of Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami, Georges Perec and Jose Saramago, said that he could still feel the force of "The Dream of the Decade."
It's no wonder, as the ambitions of the novels are large. The first and second 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 London, 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 U.K. 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. The leaking of the content of a conversation between U.S. President George W. Bush and Tony Blair is now the subject of an Official Secrets Act Injunction in the United Kingdom after allegations that the United States targeted Al Jazeera.
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"The Dream of the Decade - The London Novels" by Afshin Rattansi, published by Booksurge, ISBN 1-4196-1686-2.
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