Putting the fun in fundamentalism

Turnaround Books, the publishers of Timothy Mo’s remarkable Pure, are revealed to operate from Unit 3, Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Road, London N22. From this we may deduce that the publishing history of the three times Booker-shortlisted Anglo-Chinese novelist continues on its maverick way. Imagine if Mo had approached a conventional publisher with a proposition: this is a novel about jihad in south-east Asia, as seen through the eyes of a Muslim ladyboy.

Mo’s perversity and boldness apply in equal measure to his hero/heroine. In the person of Snooky, né Ahmed, the katoey, or ladyboy, from the Malay south who has moved to Bhuddist Bangkok, a film critic and an autodidact who loves pop culture, Mo has written the best and most plausible account of jihadi I have ever read. All recent western novels dealing with this important subject, including even the great John Updike’s 2006 Terrorist, have failed dismally to convey the sense of what it might be like to live fully within the bubble of historical grievance, victimhood and fundamentalist belief which is jihad.