One World Trade Center, under construction. June 2011.

In the years since the horrible events of September 11, several non-fiction books recounting the tragedy, like The 9/11 Commission Report, have been bestsellers. However, as the 10th anniversary looms near, a singular work of fiction that defines the era has failed to emerge. Novelist and playwright Norman Mailer advised a fellow writer to wait a decade before addressing the attacks in print because “it will take that long for you to make sense of it.” Was he right?

“The world has changed since 9/11 and our culture has changed but I haven’t yet seen the book or the movie or the poem or the song that captures the people we are now and helps us redefine who we are in this new post 9/11 world,” says journalist Lawrence Wright in an interview with Reuters. Read more…

View of Oslo city after July 22, 2011 bombing.

Bestselling thriller writer Jo Nesbø, best known for his gritty Harry Hole series, is quite familiar with the themes of murder and evil, having explored these dark impulses in his books. Yet he, and his fellow country men, were forced to deal with the ugly truth of murderous rage on July 22 when a terrorist launched twin attacks on Utøya island and an Oslo government building in Norway, killing 76 people. In an article for The guardian, Nesbø writes of the loss of innocence that his homeland experienced after the attacks and how the tragedy has changed the national psyche. Read more…

By Alex Butterworth
Pantheon | 528pgs
Release Date: June 15, 2010

Summary:
Historian Alex Butterworth studies the years spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries when unstable global economies and social upheavals turned some young people into anarchist terrorists, in The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents. The intense, captivating narrative follows the anarchist movement from its beginnings in a struggling Paris Commune in 1871, to the bloody Russian Revolution in 1905, and finally to the movement’s decline in the 1930′s. The story line moves between, Europe, Russia and the U.S. and prominent anarchist leaders such as Kropotkin, Rochefort, and Bakunin, are discussed. As the disenchanted social idealists resort to increasingly violent acts of terrorism in pursuit of a utopian way of life, governments react by creating secret police forces to investigate and prosecute the anarchists. Drawing parallels with today’s turbulent political landscape, Butterworth offers this history as a cautionary tale in hopes that new generations will not repeat the bloody mistakes of the past.
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