| NOVEL AL JAZEERA MAN"The Dream of the | | | | politics were incredibly sophisticated and polarised. |
| Decade" comes with high praise. Dan Franklin, | | | | Well, perhaps popular music is still as polarised. And |
| publisher of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian | | | | it was a time when one section of society |
| McEwan is an admirer of the book and says that | | | | leapfrogged at the expense of another."Despite |
| 30-something Rattansi "captures the atmosphere | | | | looking in his later twenties, Rattansi is on |
| of the late 1980s." But with the first British | | | | Jonathan Coe's eighties' territory about the |
| publication of this quartet, it's easy to see that | | | | post-punk, post-New Romantic time of The |
| these characters are very much living with us | | | | Smiths and the Orgreave battle of the Miners' |
| today.It's always difficult for a new novelist to | | | | Strike. But The Dream of the Decade is much |
| break through the household literary name strata. | | | | more international than Coe."I always envisaged |
| And, often, more difficult for the aspiring writer is | | | | that the four main themes or even obstacles that |
| answering questions as to what their work is | | | | the characters would have to circumnavigate |
| about. J. D. Salinger would have found it difficult to | | | | were class, political terrorism, property and the |
| describe immediately why the plot of "Catcher in | | | | media. They are vague but actually impact on |
| the Rye" was inherently interesting. Norman Mailer | | | | everyday life. Well, at the time, terrorism didn't |
| would have had trouble with "An American | | | | impact on daily life and the book rather explodes |
| Dream". It's the "hook" books like "A | | | | the myth that it does. But certainly, property |
| Handmaiden's Tale" or "The Satanic Verses" that | | | | does. As for the media, its place is an education |
| are altogether easier.There are hooks in Afshin | | | | system for adults - a dangerously flawed |
| Rattansi's debut novels, four of them published in | | | | education system. I actually wrote a novel about |
| one volume and all loosely connected, not least | | | | education but it wasn't up to scratch."Rattansi's |
| that they centre on life in London. The first book | | | | first job was at The Guardian and he has a |
| is about the growing divide between rich and poor | | | | younger brother who followed him into journalism, |
| just as balsamic vinegar was becoming fashionable | | | | now anchoring world news from CNN in the |
| amongst the new yuppie class. There follows a | | | | U.S.The novels do have a distinctly American feel |
| book on how Londoners respond to a terrorist | | | | about them even though they capture the |
| bomb scare and another on how property prices | | | | texture of London, something that many |
| began to dominate life in London. The final book is | | | | publishers commented on as he received his |
| a very thinly disguised satire, or what looks like a | | | | rejection slips. Rattansi was born in Cambridge but |
| satire, on news values at the BBC. But what | | | | has lived all over the world, covering wars and |
| unites the quartet is an ineluctable quality of the | | | | political stories and just writing. Among the places |
| writing.The thirty something British-born writer, | | | | he's lived in are Vancouver in Canada, in Los |
| whose Kenyan father is an expert on Sir Isaac | | | | Angeles and in Havana and Caracas. In Dubai, for |
| Newton and alchemy, is slightly dismissive of the | | | | two years, he headed up the developing world's |
| publication of the book."I went through two | | | | first 24 hour English language news station, |
| agencies, Curtis Brown and A.P. Watt and I can't | | | | devoted to an incredible remit that at times, |
| say I was helped much and now it's twenty years | | | | according to Rattansi "made Al Jazeera look like |
| on," he says about to pull another cigarette from | | | | Fox News.""It was a station devoted to issues of |
| a packet on the table and then replacing it. "I think | | | | globalisation and international capital except 'from |
| publishers in the eighties and earlier nineties were | | | | below' and the brother of the Crown Prince of |
| more interested in my Indian origin than the | | | | Dubai footed the bill. Someone obviously told |
| subject matter of the book."The first chapters of | | | | someone that this station was very much not in |
| the first book were written at a time of | | | | the mould of Bloomberg and the station was |
| resurgent Commonwealth writing. Rattansi, | | | | closed down. I sometimes feel as if my approach |
| himself, worked on stories about Salman Rushdie | | | | as editor of the channel was just as it was in |
| during the Satanic Verses affair when he was on | | | | setting about writing the novels."From there, it |
| Tariq Ali's groundbreaking Channel 4 series, | | | | was out of the frying pan and into the fire. |
| Bandung File.Dressed in fashionable jeans and a | | | | Returning to the BBC where he had worked as a |
| black T-shirt, Rattansi is sitting in a Chateau | | | | producer for a number of years, he found himself |
| Marmont seat after being interviewed by Los | | | | at the Today programme under one editor - Rod |
| Angeles' most progressive radio station, KPFK. On | | | | Liddle - who resigned and then under no editor, |
| the same programme was the now dead activist | | | | just as the question of Weapons of Mass |
| and former co-founder of LA's notorious Crips | | | | Destruction led up to unprecedented resignations |
| gang, Stanley "Tookie" Williams whose clemency | | | | by the Director General and Governor's Chairman |
| pleas didn't prevent him from being injected with | | | | of the BBC."Today was a hell of a place to work. |
| Sodium Pentothal."Los Angeles has always | | | | Liddle may have been quite mad but he was a |
| fascinated me and it was Mike Davis' book, City | | | | startlingly original editor. When I came back after |
| of Quartz, that enlightened me so much as to | | | | being editor of a whole station, I was dreading |
| why. Whereas London is two organisms, the | | | | Television Centre. I expected it to be staffed full |
| centre and the suburbs, Los Angeles is a myriad | | | | of the usual wire-copiers whose idea of originality |
| directly opposing entities. It has a sophisticated | | | | in journalism stretched as far as a vox pop. Rod |
| left, a developing world level population, a strong | | | | was very different and he recruited staff that |
| harbour union, fabulous colonies of wealth and it | | | | were inspired enough to take on the Government |
| creates rightwing propaganda. And natural | | | | spin machine with relish. The whole David Kelly |
| disasters have repeatedly shocked and | | | | disaster was terrible. Even more so for our |
| devastated the area."The prologue begins with | | | | realising how little power the Today programme |
| one of the lead women characters of the books, | | | | could, in the end, exert when it came to stopping |
| now settled in marriage, relocating to the site of | | | | the madness of the Iraq war."Apart from the final |
| the 2005 Asian Tsunami. It is as if the person | | | | novel, which reads as a Scoop for the |
| who most embraced the new opportunities that | | | | twenty-first century, Rattansi's characters are |
| privatisation and a city that encouraged | | | | usually doomed in love, either because of |
| entrepreneurship is most shattered by its | | | | distances, class or the overpowering pressures of |
| consequences."There is even a theory that the | | | | life in London. But this isn't Bridget Jones. There's a |
| reason why Diego Garcia wasn't affected by the | | | | real anomie in the characters - whether they are |
| tsunami was because there was no commercial | | | | drinking champagne or sitting injured in cardboard |
| prawn fishing there. In Sri Lanka and Aceh, | | | | boxes - which recalls Beckett as much as F. Scott |
| increasing commercialisation of the shrimp industry | | | | Fitzgerald.Christopher MacLehose, the publisher of |
| destroyed the protective reefs."Rattansi sees | | | | Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami, Georges Perec and |
| politics in everything. He worked as a chief risk | | | | Jos?? Saramago, said that he could still feel the |
| analyst at the insurers' Lloyd's of London after | | | | force of "The Dream of the Decade." The novels |
| they had lost billions of pounds. His expertise was | | | | are not historical. The evocation of London, in |
| in catastrophe analysis, both environmental and | | | | particular, is as palpable as in Peter Ackroyd's |
| political. But the books are in no way political | | | | biography of the city. Sometimes, it is to the |
| tracts."One of the most moving letters of F. | | | | capital city as Bukowski's prose was to Los |
| Scott Fitzgerald is the one he writes to his | | | | Angeles - indeed the Barfly himself read it and |
| daughter, urging her to read Marx. His novels may | | | | found it uplifting. At other times it is strictly |
| be liked by criminal conservatives like Jeffrey | | | | Waugh. Whereas most journalists' fiction |
| Archer but whether a novel is political one way or | | | | demonstrates that being a hack is an Enemy of |
| another is in the eye of the beholder."What | | | | Promise, Rattansi creates big characters whom |
| animates the title novel, I hope, is that I was part | | | | we feel for because he examines the minutiae of |
| of a generation which was convinced that the | | | | their emotions. But, as one would expect from |
| social fabric that was ripped apart by Mrs. | | | | someone who covered the fall of the Berlin Wall |
| Thatcher would take a long time to mend. It's | | | | and who worked at the controversial Arabic |
| perhaps difficult to remember for those in their | | | | satellite TV station, Al Jazeera, the themes are |
| twenties that there was a time when music and | | | | far from small. |