When Chris Cleave’s debut novel

was first published in 2005, it garnered much critical attention and unwarranted notoriety.

tells the story of a fictive Al Qaeda suicide attack on London, in which the narrator, an unnamed Cockney woman, loses both her husband and small son. In a macabre twist of coincidence, the book was scheduled for release on the very same day, 7 July 2005, that four suicide bombers detonated their devices on the London Underground and on a bus, killing more than fifty people and injuring hundreds more. This coincidence heightened the shock value of the book’s controversial set-up:

is a kind of epistolary novel, beginning with the words “Dear Osama”, in which the distraught female narrator mourns the death of her loved ones and…

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Citation: Tancke, Ulrike. "Incendiary". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 March 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=28524, accessed 26 November 2024.]