What happens when political terror is successfully packaged as entertainment?
STRONGMAN is a searing, psychologically complex novel set in a post-colonial African country. It traces the spectacular rise and collapse of a modern dictatorship and the enduring corruption and woes that replace it.
At the center is General Mahmud Al Harun, a brutal, charismatic, and scheming man whose rule is sustained not by force alone. But by a masterful control of the narrative, aided by a cynical chorus of Western journalists who prioritize good copy over fair reportage.
The narrative is filtered through the experiences of an idealistic but naive young man, who leaves family and country for a college education abroad, filled with hopes.
Soon however, the Young Man's bubble of normalcy is burst by the Strongman's violent coup in the homeland he just left behind. His determination for direct resistance is soon crushed not by Harun's brute force, but by the overwhelming spectacle of global media disinformation and misinformation.
He soon realizes that the most dangerous tyranny is not brute force, but the sweeping narrative force of a globalizing media.
The novel's core thematic move comes in the final act, when the events of the coup and the political terror that follow, are packaged into a blockbuster movie that transforms a Nation's sorrows into a cultural commodity for the amusement of a Global audience.
Driven to despair, the Young Man abandons plans for political action in favor of the slow and agonizing labor of writing a counter narrative against a regime built on terror and performance.
STRONGMAN is a powerful literary indictment of media complicity and political performance in which make-belief displaces reality.
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