A blazingly propulsive novel from the prize-winning author of In Our
Mad and Furious City, following a captured jihadist and poet-preacher
as he recounts his path to international notoriety
Who is Yahya Bas? Revolutionary poet, notorious jihadist, misbegotten
son, self-styled idiot-boy. When the enigmatic Yahya finds himself
languishing in a detention center after fleeing the conflict in Syria,
he has many questions to face.
What was he doing in the desert? Why did he betray his home country?
What led him to write the incendiary verses that launched him into
international infamy? Mister, his interrogator, wants answers. So Yahya
resolves to tell his own story, in his own words, and on his own terms.
Mister, Mister is what follows: a coming-of-age story of radical
self-invention, a quest for a long-lost father, and a discovery of
another way to live in the shadow of war. Brash, biting, yet ultimately
tender and bracingly imaginative, Mister, Mister follows a child of
the tumultuous 90s and the ravaged aughts as he becomes the unwitting
voice of a generation.
Who is Yahya Bas? An anti-hero for our modern era, in which we've just
begun to survey the wreckage of the West's forever-wars.
