[Norman_Spinrad]_Osama_the_Gun(Bokos-Z1)

Osama the Gun
by Norman Spinrad
4.2 of 5 stars 4.20 · rating details · 10 ratings · 1 review
OSAMA THE GUN, set in a not-so-far future when the “Sons of Osama” have re-established a powerful Islamic Caliphate with Pakistani nuclear weapons and Arabian oil money, is the story of one of those “sons” of the martyr, a naive and sincere young man named after him, who becomes a Caliphate secret agent just to escape its closed confines to see the world, and stepwise finds himself becoming the reluctant hero of the title, as told to the reader by Osama the Gun himself.

Osama becomes a terrorist leader on a small scale by happenstance, a mercenary used by Islamic forces fighting an American proxy invasion in the oil lands of Nigeria, an iconic figure in the manner of “El Che,” and all the while charms the reader as a likable, sincere, idealistic and sympathetic human doing very unsympathetic things to the interests of the United States of America.

“I wanted the reader to hate the sin, but love the sinner, because I felt it had to be done, and since no one else seemed to be willing to do it, I had to try to do it myself, come what may. Because Islam was being confused with its radical Middle Eastern jihadhis, and Arabs in general with terrorists, and it seemed to me that the alien jihadhist consciousness had to be experienced from within and empathetically understood. Which was why OSAMA THE GUN had to be written, and why, as one foaming at the mouth rejection letter predicted, no American publisher would touch this book, and no doubt why the editor who wrote it has thusfar been proven right.”




Norman Spinrad
Author profile

born
in New York, The United States
September 15, 1940

genre
Science Fiction & Fantasy


About this author
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Born in New York in 1940, Norman Spinrad has been an acclaimed SF writer.

Norman Spinrad, born in New York City, is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. In 1957 he entered City College of New York and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major. In 1966 he moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris. He married fellow novelist N. Lee Wood in 1990; they divorced in 2005. They had no children. Spinrad served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1980 to 1982 and again from 2001 to 2002.