The Sleeper : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Par
Review: This is my first experience with this author. With his background there is no doubt he has some rather intimate knowledge about what he writes.
I found the novel to be fast as well as furious. The writing is what I had a small problem with. It seemed quick and abbreviated with not a great deal of depth. There was certainly no wasted words in this book.
A quick and satisfying read just the same.

Rating:
Summary: "The Sleeper" A Page-Turner That Makes You Think
Review: "On the morning of September 12... I heard the knock on the door that I'd been
waiting for..." With this knock, Kurt Kurtovic is thrust into a world of murder and
deception, a world he had tried to escape.

This is an amazing thriller that makes you think long and hard about the events of
the last couple years. The author, Christopher Dickey, has worked for Newsweek
since 1993 and is currently the Paris bureau chief. This explains his ability to create
a story steeped in such chilling realism. In a recent interview with MSNBC Dickey
said "I use the fiction to game out the possibilities inherent in the facts."

If you like Tom Clancy and other books that draw from current political and military
situations, this book is right up your alley. The plot is gripping and original. The
mind of the main character is painted with fascinating attention to detail.

If 9/11 was indeed a "failure of the imagination" on the part of American intelligence
agencies (as the 9/11 Commission described it), then books like "The Sleeper" are a
public service, inviting people to think deeply about disturbing realities that are all
too easy to sweep under the rug. It's a great read, and hopefully it will scare you
into doing your part to make the world a less terrifying place.

M.H.

Rating:
Summary: As good a ride as "Bourne Supremacy" ---with scary politics
Review: "The Sleeper" is a ride on the order of "The Bourne Supremacy" ---Kurt Kurtovic races through Britain, Spain and Africa at a hellacious pace. He's hunting al-Qaeda. But he's also being hunted.

The action in "The Sleeper" is tense, the violence ugly and, sadly, journalistically accurate. The dialogue snaps. The men are dangerous. Trust does not exist. Death is cheap, and there are many willing to deliver it --- and meet it. Read it at night, and you'll feel you should check the door locks.

There are alarm bells in the night; we've conditioned ourselves not to hear them, lest we wake from the dream we're living in, the dream that tells us it's going to be alright somehow. And maybe we're smart to do that. Could any of this book's readers could be as decisive as Kurt? As resourceful? As cold? As effective?

You see the problem this reader's having: He thinks "The Sleeper" is real. Because it's so good --- so fast-paced, so sure-footed, so vividly violent --- it's hard to consign it to the fiction bin. This has to be the way it really works in the shadowy zone where men kill and are killed without a word in the newspapers. An action-packed story with a character Tom Cruise could play --- yes, this is that....but there is so much more here.

As he was in "Innocent Blood," Dickey is once ahead seeing into the future. How scary is that? At 288 pages, it won't take you long to find out.


Rating:
Summary: Behind the veil
Review: Drawing on the knowledge and expertise gleaned from his years as Newsweek's Middle East editor, Christopher Dickey has written a fastpaced page-turner that takes us behind the headlines of the "War on Terror". Following the horror of September 11th, Kurt Kurtovic, who is living peacefully in the midwest town of Westfield with his wife and daughter, receives a visit from government agents who question his past. This motivates him to set forth to infiltrate Al Quaeda and attempt to forestall further attacks that he senses are imminent.

On a journey that takes him to Britain, Spain, Africa and imprisonment in Guatanamo Bay, Kurtovic uncovers and kills a major Al Quaeda leader, discovers that a series of further attacks are underway using ships with dirty bombs, and is left dangling by unknown American handlers. Ultimately he is freed to return to Westfield where he is reunited with his wife and daughter who have been under Agency protection. But he has a secret, a biological weapon which he has retained from his pre-September 11th exploits. This he destroys. Shadowy figures kidnap his daughter and demand he produce the secret weapon. Together he and his wife manage to outwit and outfight them. Ultimately the trail leads back to the Sleeper, an underground figure in America with friends in high places, who is manipulating many of the players in this tale of evil.



Rating:
Summary: Resonant with the ranging pulse of a post-9/11 American
Review: I found Christopher Dickey's "The Sleeper" not just to be an a lucid narrative of a renegade patriot putting his own peace on the line for his family, but a compelling portrait of what it means to be an American today, sure of our need to fight but in question over who and what to fight against, used to wars when there are clear absolutes and defined goals, and faced with a climate where the professed enemy ("terror") is no more tangible than the values of freedom and liberty we are out to protect and defend.

Like "The Sleeper" 's protagonist Kurt Kurtovic, 9/11, at least temporarily, wiped out all the soul-searching, the jagged roads and winding pasts that many of us Americans took to sleep the night before, bringing us that next day to a jaw dropping impasse where nothing seemed the same and everything felt up in the air. And we wanted to do something, in whatever ways we could be of most service- for Kurt, it was going back into the bowels of the terror trade, a world in which he once thrived and which he is now ready to thrash in name of peace. And through his scavenger hunt from Kansas to Kenya for clues and old contacts, in search of honey merchants and jihadi training camps, his global pursuit of bad guys spawns more and more doubt if there are any good ones, even amongst those he trusts and answers to. And in the end... well, I don't want to be the "Spoiler" so I'll leave that to you.

The only main qualm I had with the book might be the depths at which the Dickey goes into the violence and torture used by and on the terrorists, but it is perhaps my own taste for the comforting that still finds such graphic details unsettling to fully conceive of, even if they are done in the name of saving lives. It's easy to forget the dirty work that comes with the territory of hunting down mal-intended extremists; back rubs don't make people talk and terrorists don't always just fall into our lap like the headlines often seem to indicate. The book might be fiction but it has the power and commands the empathy of the (all too) real world in which we now live in.

As an active reader , there are many things that press the "brew" button on my pot of skepticism, but here are three. One, book reviews full of judgment without any mention of substance about the story's content or any indication the reviewer read the book whatsoever. Two, labels affixed to genres of prose predicting the emotions a reader will have (you will be thrilled, you will "feel good"). Three, the flurry of journalists and authors implicitly or directly purporting themselves as "experts" on terrorism since that horrible morning 3 years ago when pre-9/11, like most of us, Al Queda sounded more like the name of a relief pitcher for the Expos than it did a well funded international network of Islamic fundamentalists hell-bent furthering the world divide by any means necessary.

This being said, while the Sleeper was definitely gripping, I wouldn't call it a thriller, but more mental and emotional fuel. Pardon the pun, but I wasn't much of a sleeper myself with all the threads of thought I was left to process after finishing it. And, knowing Mr. Dickey's work, as a Newsweek foreign correspondent and editor , including his book `Expats" on his travels in the Middle East, not to mention from a simple web search, the scores of articles he's penned from datelines around the Arab world since the 80's, it seems no stretch to count him amongst the most informed Western commentators on the changing landscape of the Anglo-Arab relations as well as the evolving nature of the war with those whose embrace terror as tactic. And clearly, as he footnotes in the book, his chameleon-like immersion as a globetrotting journalist into the circles of power-playing international statesmen and the ears to the pavement operatives at the heart of the post 9/11 world have been put to great imaginative use here, yielding a profoundly engaging and clear-headed story."The Sleeper" is certainly a telling look at the war of one individual but is also evocative of the many wars the bulk of us haven't realized we are fighting to this day.

Whether you fly through "The Sleeper" on a long airplane flight like I did or choose to digest it slowly from the tranquility of your bedroom, I'd highly suggest giving it a good read.

A.G.T.E.

Rating:
Summary: enthralling thriller
Review: In Westfield, Kansas on September 11, 2001, Kurt Kurtovic turned on the TV to see his world collapse along with the Twin Towers. He knows that was just the beginning as the terrorists have further plans because he was once one of them and knows how they think. Part Muslim and working in the Special Forces, he was drawn into the Arab propaganda when he fought in Bosnia. Kurt even met Bin Laden before returning home carrying a weapon that would kill many Americans. However, he no longer believes in the Jihad as he relishes his tranquil life with his wife Betsy and their daughter Miriam.

However, he knows Al Qaeda is coming again gathering all their cells and operatives to help with the next attack. Kurt meets with old contacts and learns that ships are coming with weapons to kill many Americans. Arrested and flown to Guantomino Bay, he serves as a mole providing Intel until his release back to his family so that he could be the bait to lure and trap the deadly leader THE SLEEPER.

The protagonist believes he made many mistakes in his youth, but when he realized his errors he refused to join the mass murdering of innocents. Because he was one of them, he understands how they think and more important how they feel; he becomes an unsung hero willing to take them on in his town to stop the plots. THE SLEEPER is an enthralling thriller that takes plausible concepts as stated by Homeland Security and puts them into a fabulous frightening story.

Harriet Klausner


Rating:
Summary: A Solid, Entertaining Book
Review: Neil Gordon's review of "The Sleeper" in the Washington Post Book World is a farce. What is the point of defining what a novelist's main goal should be ("to see the truth of the world around him and convey that truth to the reader"), and then faulting the author being reviewed for betraying this arbitrarily chosen "prime directive"? The whole thing smacks of an egomaniacal English professor spouting dictums that we should accept on faith because he knows who "Stendhal" is. I'm sure Gordon's copy of "The Sleeper" had "Show, don't tell!" scribbled frantically all over the margins. For readers that have actually formed their own ideas of what makes a good novel, his peremptory verdict is a bit premature.

Gordon's rant about Dickey's fictional Saddam possibly providing Kurt, the lead character, with WMD's is equally absurd. "Would Dickey print this outrageous canard in Newsweek? Of course he wouldn't... But why is he printing it here?" Because Dickey made it up! That's why it belongs in his novel, and not in Newsweek. Where is the issue there? Should we be shocked that it would be more exciting to read about a world where Saddam might have given out a WMD or two? Should we be outraged that in Dickey's fictional writing there is actually some, well, fiction? "The Sleeper" may have important truths to convey, but if you're going to look for these truths in a literal interpretation of its plot points, you probably shouldn't be reading fiction in the first place.

To put it bluntly, novelists have to make stuff up, or else they wouldn't be novelists, they would be historians. To go back to Stendhal, "The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent." Gordon knows that he can't really get away with panning Dickey for having fiction in his fiction. So he backtracks, saying that he's not upset about Dickey making stuff up, he's upset that Dickey is making stuff up and then using his investigative credentials as a selling point. (A point which should have at least been made at the outset, before the histrionic complaining about Dickey's flights of fancy.)

But the point about Dickey's credentials is that he is well suited to write about this stuff, not that we should believe everything in his book as fact. Steven Hawking would probably be good at writing a sci-fi book revolving around the physics of time travel. That doesn't mean that when he does we should all assume that he's saying that time travel is possible. ("Would Hawking print this outrageous canard in his next physics text book? Of course he wouldn't...) Is Dickey supposed to write a book of political intrigue and not mention on the book sleeve that he's been reporting on terrorism for over 10 years? ("Christopher Dickey lives in Paris and loves fruit-filled crepes and small animals...")

Regardless of the absurdity of Gordon's review, the very fact that someone who uses the phrase "Stendhalian representation of truth" didn't like this book should tell you all you need to know. Here is the low-down, stripped of ivory tower hot air: If you are looking for the straight truth about the Iraq war, don't read this book. That's what non-fiction is for. If you want to read an exciting book that creatively draws from the facts about Iraq and Homeland Security to tell an enthralling story (or as J. Peterman says "a ripping good yarn"), then you might like this book. You might not. Who knows.

I don't think this book is trying to communicate some deep spiritual message about the meaning of life. It's just a fascinating exploration of what happens when you take a couple of "what if" situations and let them play out. To whine about it not being "art" is like complaining that Will Smith isn't as good as Sidney Poitier while watching "Enemy of the State."

Daniel P. Bana ([e-mail])

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly extraordinary novel of vengeance and betrayal
Review: THE SLEEPER features the return of Kurt Kurtovic, last seen in Christopher Dickey's INNOCENT BLOOD. INNOCENT BLOOD is a novel of catharsis and redemption; THE SLEEPER is tinged with vengeance and betrayal. It begins with Kurtovic having obtained a separate if uneasy peace in Westfield, Kansas with his wife and daughter. That tranquility is shattered on the morning of September 11, 2001. Kurtovic is approached by Griffin, a government man who brings to mind both the best and worst of Kurtovic's past. Griffin would like Kurtovic back in the world of his former colleagues in Al-Qaeda. He wants Kurtovic, in Griffin's words, to "take out the bad guys." And Kurtovic does just that, with a vengeance, in a world where, as Kurtovic is told, "nothing is true and everything is permitted."

Following an incident of unspeakable carnage in Somalia, however, Kurtovic finds himself taken prisoner by U.S. Forces and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay for some dark purpose. Griffin, who is supposed to protect Kurtovic, is at once a part of and apart from a devious plot that puts Kurtovic and his family in terrible danger, a danger that leads to an apocalyptic ending and the exacting of a rough but mysterious justice.

Dickey possesses extraordinary literary ability. He gets deep into the crevices of Kurtovic's mind in a way that few of his contemporaries can equal. It is accordingly all the more noticeable when he takes two brief but totally unnecessary plot deviations in order to somehow impute complicity in the terrorist attacks to Bush. It does nothing for THE SLEEPER other than to keep a great book from being even better.

I will readily admit that I approached THE SLEEPER with some trepidation. Dickey writes regular essays for a website published by a weekly newsmagazine that are uniformly interesting but too often ruined for me by that faux gravamen too often exhibited by those citizens of the United States who, for whatever reason, choose to live abroad and have thus been granted the key to enlightenment denied to the beetle-browed who remain behind in the colonies. In light of the foregoing, one might be surprised to find me wholeheartedly recommending THE SLEEPER.

Also to be noted, given that THE SLEEPER is the second book of an intended trilogy, it will be interesting to see where Dickey goes with this in the third and final volume.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub