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A review by greatlibraryofalexandra
The Mirage by Matt Ruff
3.0
First book of 2022.
I really don’t know what to rate this. It was a weird one, y’all.
I enjoyed reading it. It was funny, provocative, and chock full niche references and alt history easter eggs. I’m not sure I could quite, from the text alone, figure out what Matt Ruff was trying to do - but his own explanation is that this book was still about American’s, and the “mirage” we were treated to when our leaders promised we were righteous in our response to 9/11.
Ruff holds a mirror up to the faults and darkness of US foreign policy and cultural zeitgeist using the flipped perspective, but there’s also a thin line there between the US (rightly) being the butt of the joke and a world in which the Arab states are advanced being the joke, and it’s a precarious one.
I loved the final line of the book (pre-Epilogue). I also loved the tongue-in-cheek references and subtle nuances laced throughout.
Definitely a weird one. A good one. I think a huge drawback of it is that you as a reader need a pretty extensive knowledge base of national security, terrorism, US foreign policy, and US domestic politics, to fully appreciate the eerie comedy of a lot of this book’s content.
“A wicked prince in one world is a wicked prince in all worlds.”
I really don’t know what to rate this. It was a weird one, y’all.
I enjoyed reading it. It was funny, provocative, and chock full niche references and alt history easter eggs. I’m not sure I could quite, from the text alone, figure out what Matt Ruff was trying to do - but his own explanation is that this book was still about American’s, and the “mirage” we were treated to when our leaders promised we were righteous in our response to 9/11.
Ruff holds a mirror up to the faults and darkness of US foreign policy and cultural zeitgeist using the flipped perspective, but there’s also a thin line there between the US (rightly) being the butt of the joke and a world in which the Arab states are advanced being the joke, and it’s a precarious one.
I loved the final line of the book (pre-Epilogue). I also loved the tongue-in-cheek references and subtle nuances laced throughout.
Definitely a weird one. A good one. I think a huge drawback of it is that you as a reader need a pretty extensive knowledge base of national security, terrorism, US foreign policy, and US domestic politics, to fully appreciate the eerie comedy of a lot of this book’s content.
“A wicked prince in one world is a wicked prince in all worlds.”