A review by chronotope
Atta by Jarett Kobek

5.0

Atta is a book that is hard to describe. Meticulous, fascinating, disturbing.

In some ways it might be best to go into this book with no knowledge of what is within, which is how I did it. To be so thoroughly introduced to the internal voice and thought process of a character who is often used to exemplify inhumanity, and whose acts are well deserving of revilement, is to repudiate dehumanization, generalization and demonization. Even our worst enemies are still people; their thoughts and motivations are not uniform, and may not even be what we suspect. Even the clearest of evils does not have the clearest of sources.

Jarett Kobek writes a well-researched historical fiction

Spoiler

from the point of view of one of the 9/11 plane hijackers, centered on the idea that for Atta the attack was as much an architectural statement as a religious one.

Few books will make you think more.