MATT RUFF / The Mirage

Wednesday, March 7 at 7:30 PM

11/9/2001: 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.

The United Arab States declares a War on Terror. Arabian and Persian troops invade the Eastern Seaboard and establish a Green Zone in Washington, D.C. . . .

Summer, 2009: Arab Homeland Security agent 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. Other captured terrorists have been telling the same story. The president wants answers, but Mustafa soon discovers he's not the only interested party.

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. As Mustafa and his colleagues venture deeper into the unsettling world of terrorism, politics, and espionage, they are confronted with questions without any rational answers, and the terrifying possibility that their world is not what it seems.

Acclaimed novelist Matt Ruff has created a shadow world that is eerily recognizable but, at the same time, almost unimaginable. Gripping, subversive, and unexpectedly moving, The Mirage probes our deepest convictions and most arresting fears. It’s the most original 9/11 tale that we have yet seen, a unique and mesmerizing literary entertainment.

Booklist writes, “Cult favorite Ruff's past novels… are all wildly, thrillingly different, but they do share one recurring characteristic: they are total brain-twisters but in a good way…Like Robert Ferrigno in his Assassin trilogy, Ruff enthusiastically upends world history, offering provocative commentary while grounding his story with a highly appealing Muslim cast.”

Matt Ruff is the author of the award-winning novels Bad Monkeys and Set This House in Order, as well as the cult classics Fool on the Hill and Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Lisa Gold.

Matt Ruff's Story Behind The Book:

I wanted to tell a 9/11 story that wasn’t like other 9/11 stories. My previous novel, Bad Monkeys, had touched tangentially on the subject, but I still wanted to work on a project that dealt directly with the moral, political, and religious issues surrounding the War on Terror. I wanted something that would work as a story, with twists and turns and memorable characters that would engage readers the way Bad Monkeys had. And as much as was possible given the subject matter, I wanted something optimistic, something that could end on a note of hope. So I decided to turn the world upside down.

The initial inspiration for The Mirage came to me in 2006, a low point in the Iraq War when it became obvious to all but the truest believers just how much the invasion had been premised on magical thinking. It had sounded so simple: we would go in, remove Saddam Hussein from power, pull down a few statues, and then American-style democracy would spontaneously bloom, not just in Iraq, but throughout the Middle East. But reality hadn’t cooperated.

So I was thinking about that, and about unintended consequences, and hit on the idea of an alternate reality in which the architects of the Iraq War had gotten their wish—sort of. In the world of The Mirage, America and the Middle East trade places. The country that gets attacked on 9/11—on 11/9—is the United Arab States, a liberal democracy whose citizens can’t understand why anyone would hate them. The country that gets invaded and occupied is a Christian fundamentalist America. The Americans naturally resent this, and they are haunted by the sense that this isn’t how things are meant to be—that in the world as God intended, they, and not the Arabs, are supposed to be the conquering superpower.

Using this as a backdrop, I went on to construct a classic thriller plot in which agents of Arab Homeland Security, in the course of protecting Baghdad from Western “crusaders,” stumble across a conspiracy involving members of their own government—including a powerful senator named Osama bin Laden.

This Jack-Bauer-through-the-looking-glass setup certainly met my criterion of being different, and I thought it would make a gripping read. But I also hoped it would offer a fresh perspective on the war. Part of what made September 11 so devastating was the belief that that sort of catastrophe couldn’t happen to America. To other, weaker nations, sure, but not to us. We were supposed to be immune. And even now when we should know better, a lot of the debate about the War on Terror—about torture and civil liberties, about air strikes, about regime change—is premised on the assumption that we will never be at the mercy of a greater power.

The Mirage turns that assumption of immunity on its head, then shatters it completely. The novel’s title comes from the belief, first voiced by a captured suicide bomber, that this world in which Arabia is the dominant power is only an illusion—a temporary one. My protagonists are understandably skeptical at first, but as their investigation continues, they’re forced to consider that their place on the winning side of history may not be guaranteed. Nobody’s is.

As for the Americans, demoted uncharacteristically to the role of supporting cast, I thought they might help shed some light on the most vexing 9/11 question of all. I never really bought the whole “they hate us for our freedoms” argument. On the other hand, if you take a group of people who think they ought to be in charge, subject them to a foreign power’s whims, and combine the resulting frustration with an apocalyptic belief system—Christian or Muslim, makes no difference—you begin to see how strapping on a suicide vest might seem like a rational option.

On the matter of faith, I also wanted to dispel the notion of Islam as an alien religion. In the United Arab States, being Muslim is unremarkable. It matters, it’s an important part of peoples’ identities, but what distinguishes a guy like Osama bin Laden is not the way he prays, it’s the fact that he’s a murderer. Meanwhile my protagonists—Mustafa, Samir, and Amal—aren’t saddled with the burden of being exemplars of virtue, the way the Muslim sidekicks in a more typical 9/11 story would be. They’re free to be flawed, normal human beings, not so different from the Westerners they find themselves at odds with.

Which brings me back to optimism. The Mirage takes a dim view of grand schemes to transform the world, particularly those that are sold as being part of some divine plan. As Mustafa observes: “God can do anything. He can say no.” But the novel also suggests that, for those who respect the Golden Rule, small miracles of mercy and justice are still possible.

I’m sure the last ten years have left a lot of readers feeling war-weary, but I hope they’ll give The Mirage a chance. In the end, the story is everything I wanted it to be and more. I think it’s my best work.