I Sell Death - Autobiography of a Terrorist by Raj

Then, when the story is told, the man’s past is told as stages of awakening from a coma. All of this is making me think I’m looking at a clumsy thriller-type lead in, not a serious autobiographical story. Raj claims he had no computer, no means of writing down what he was told at the time of the meeting.

There follows quite a lot of hide-and-seek until they start to meet and the story is told. Similarly with Raj, he begins by telling us he met a man at the railway station who wanted to tell him the story of some third person. While I enjoyed Martel’s invitation, wanting to believe in the young man crossing the Pacific in a small boat with the tiger aboard, I was never totally certain it was a novel, not until we got to the floating island. He invites us to believe the story we are about to hear. Is it really a life story told to the scribe Raj, or is this a novel with some clumsy literary devices? I remember the first chapter of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi tells us, here is a writer in search of a story who hears about a man who had an extraordinary experience, and he will now relate it to us. But initially the first half of the book is confusing. But I should warn the formatting is curious, the punctuation erratic, there are no page numbers and no gutter margin so lines disappear at one end. There are insights of potentially great value in this book, so I don’t want to put anyone off reading it. Well, it’s an earnest book but a bumpy ride to transport us to the final destination, a destination I can whole-heartedly applaud – empathy, tolerance and opening our eyes to who and what is behind terrorism in the world.

It might be considered a ‘spoiler’ by some, but Raj tells us in the forward where he is heading.)

I Sell Death - Autobiography of a Terrorist by Raj