The Unknown Terrorist

A superb critique of the climate of fear and the loss of personal freedoms, so hard won over many centuries now being wittled away. No one is spared from Flanagan's barbs, Sydney Morning Herald readers, suburbanites all get their serve. A great read.

Feeling somewhat cocky that I owned a copy of our f2f book for this month I was more than happy to finally get a chance to read THE UNKNOWN TERRORIST by Richard Flanagan. No matter that it turned out that the book club book was another one altogether (might make a note of that book later on), I really really really enjoyed THE UNKNOWN TERRORIST.

This book beautifully illustrates the way that somebody's reputation, life and future can be trashed comprehensively by one little mistake compounded by somebody else's blatant personal interest. Not wanting to give away too much, basically the story is about a young woman, with a bad start in life, who has a plan and an aim and is working her way towards that. Okay so the job (exotic dancer / show more stripper / whatever you want to call it) might not be the sort of job that everyone would be comfortable doing, but our central character, Gina does what she does well - with the aim of putting away enough money to buy a house and make a life for herself. A trip to the beach, a brief encounter with a young man who saves her best friend's little boy from the surf, and long story short, Gina ends up spending the night with him. Waking up the next morning on her own, wandering across the road to get a coffee, looking back to find her one night stand is the target of a massive intelligence / police raid, Gina's life rapidly spirals downwards. Not helped by the CCTV footage that shows her kissing him - a man she quickly comes to know is a suspected terrorist. Enter the slimy self-serving and rather revolting journalist, and Gina's suddenly a wanted woman - you'd swear one of the most dangerous women in Australia.

There's absolutely nothing subtle about the scenario being explored in THE UNKNOWN TERRORIST - but there is a lot of subtlety in the outcomes. The journalist's behaviour is, unfortunately, not hard to envisage. Gina's not quite as predictable - whilst it would have been possible to hammer an agenda a little too strongly, Gina's sympathetic but at the same time she's stupid and frustrating and contributes just a little to her own fate - early on when she could have just gone to the authorities and surely had a hope of sorting out the whole mess, she dithers and dives and goes into hiding and from that point on, you know that things are getting worse and worse for her. Having said that, there's room for a reader to feel real sympathy for her decisions (bad and good), there's a real feeling of the powerlessness of being a nobody, slightly on the fringes of "polite society" up against the tide of media influence, public reactivity and hysteria.

One of the blurbs on the back of this book really caught my eye ... an excerpt of which deserves to be repeated: "THE UNKNOWN TERRORIST should be required reading - with eyelids pinned open, if necessary, and forced to look..." David Masiel WASHINGTON POST. I suspect there will be some whose will find the scenario in this book difficult to swallow (and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find accusations of certain political sympathies on my own part). Regardless of where you stand on the issue of terrorism and the treatment of terrorists, THE UNKNOWN TERRORIST is surely a poignant reminder of the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" and a stark example of the ills of trial by media. show less

A chilling scenario, and oh so frighteningly possible in current times. This book has been so strongly recommended to me by friends and family that I had to read it, but if not for their enthusiasm I would not have persisted beyond the first few sections since I did not find 'The Doll' a believable character. Flannagan has written a polemic disguised as a thriller: he has done it very well, but it is his concerns (which I share) rather than his characters which drive the story.

To say that I was disappointed with this novel would be an understatement. After enjoying Flanagan's amazing Gould's Book of Fish I expected a similar performance. That did not occur and this novel is pedestrian at best. Although the basic outlines of this story come from Heinrich Böll’s novel “The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum,” written in response to the terrorism scares that Germany suffered in the late 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Flanagan has turned the story into a meditation upon the post-9/11 world, a globalized world in which fear is a valued commodity for terrorists and governments alike, a world in which rumors and misinformation circumnavigate the globe in the flash of an eye, and narratives replace facts and truths. While show more the plot was nicely paced the writing and characterization was barely adequate and his attempt at a message suffered as a result. I hope that Flanagan's next novel returns to the quality of his earlier work. show less

The folks at Tourism Australia must be squirming about Richard Flanagan's only slightly exaggerated portrait of Sydney's underbelly of greed, cruelty and vacuousness. The Unknown Terrorist holds an uncomfortable, undeniable ring of truth about life in a global city, though its impact is greatly depleted by its shallow characterisations and totally unsympathetic heroine. The novel also suffers from a self-consciously cinematic plot and mood - it seems highly likely that in a drab mid-town office block, somebody is right this minute negotiating with Abbie Cornish or Kestie Morassi to play The Doll in a blockbuster movie. It's not a bad story, but certainly nothing new or particularly engaging.

Gina Davies, aka 'The Doll' is a pole dancer from Sydney, who yearns for a better life for herself. To The Doll, all that matters is the pursuit of money and all the pleasures that it can being (such as designer clothes, accessories etc.). One night, The Doll has a one night stand with a stranger named Tariq, who has disappeared by morning. At around the same time, three unexploded bombs are discovered, and Gina discovers that Tariq is a suspected terrorist...and as someone who has been seen with him, she finds herself a suspected terrorist (the 'unknown terrorist' of the title).

The Doll goes on the run, while around her the media whips Sydney into a state of panic about the threat of terrorism. An unsavoury journalist jumps on the show more bandwagon in an attempt to rescue his own flagging career, and soon the situation becomes a major news story, with Gina as public enemy number one.

This book can be enjoyed as a straightforward thriller, but there is a a subtext, showing how the media manipulate people's fears, and how such fears give society justification for vilifying people, with nothing concrete to base their feelings on. Scariest of all was the fact that it is easy to see how such a situation could happen in today's culture of fear.

It's a fast moving story (despite taking place over only a few days); the first half however was more enjoyable for me than the second half, which seemed to get a bit bogged down by some overwrought prose. It also felt a little preachy towards the end, but overall this did not detract from the story. show less

This was a pretty disappointing read given how much I've enjoyed everything else Flanagan has written. The problem is the politics of it (which I broadly agree with) are so overt and unsubtle and, at the end of the day, unbelievable. It feels like a screed disguised as a novel, with too-obvious villains and over the top cynicism. I recognise and sympathise with the anger that drives the book, but, as a novel, it's a pretty limited.