Aatish Taseer
The Quiet American
Undercover Muslim: A Journey into Yemen
By Theo Padnos
The Bodley Head 293pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
‘Curiosity’, Conrad tells us in Lord Jim, ‘is the most obvious of sentiments.’ And if it was curiosity, restlessness, a dislike of George W Bush, or even boredom with his job as an English teacher in a Vermont prison that made Theo Padnos drop what he was doing and set out for Yemen, he should just tell us as much.
What he did instead – to the detriment of his otherwise excellently observed book – was pretend to become a Muslim. Were this just a ruse, the safest way – as Padnos correctly surmised – to penetrate the highly
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Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553