Die Luftspiegelung

Uuui. Matt Ruff hat eine Ankündigung seines neuen Romans The Mirage in die News-Section seiner Homepage gestellt. Das Ding kommt – im englischsprachigen Original – im Februar 2012. Und die Story scheint auf geradezu unheimliche Weise zu den traurigen Ereignissen in Norwegen* zu passen:

November 9, 2001: Christian fundamentalists hijack four jetliners. They fly two into the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh. The fourth plane, believed to be bound for Mecca, is brought down by its passengers in the desert.

The United Arab States declares a War on Terror. A Coalition of Arabian and Persian troops invades the Eastern Seaboard and establishes a Green Zone in Washington, D.C....

Now, several years later, the war in America is winding down. In Iraq, an Arab Homeland Security agent named Mustafa al Baghdadi interrogates a captured suicide bomber. The prisoner claims that the world they are living in is a mirage—in the real world, America is a superpower, and the Arab states are just a collection of “backward third-world countries.” A search of the bomber’s apartment turns up a copy of the New York Times, dated September 12, 2001, that appears to support his claim.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Other captured terrorists have been telling the same story, and other “artifacts” have been found. The president wants answers, but Mustafa and his team soon discover there are other interested parties. The gangster Saddam Hussein is conducting his own investigation. And the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee—a war hero named Osama bin Laden—will stop at nothing to hide the truth about the mirage.

In der Molochronik gibt es eine deutsche Übersetzung des Blurbs. Fertig ist der Roman seit Juli, gerade gibt es letzte Korrekturdurchgänge, wie Ruff in seinem Blog vermeldet.

* Traurig, nicht tragisch. Tragisch wären die Anschläge vielleicht, wenn sie unvorhersehbar gewesen wären. Das gesellschaftliche Klima, das derzeit in Europa herrscht, hat diese Art von politischem Verbrechen m.E. aber außerordentlich begünstigt.