The Dream of the Decade: A Quartet

By Afshin Rattansi

A quartet following the lives and themes that dominated living in Britain and America in the 1980s, examining the growth of finance, property, media and terrorism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1419616862
• ISBN13: 9781419616860
• Release Date: December 2005
• Publisher: Booksurge Publishing
• Length: 622 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Thank you, Google!

If it wasn't for Google, I probably wouldn't have come across The Dream of the Decade and so I would have missed an incredible experience. When I entered Afshin Rattansi's website, I didn't even have a single idea who he actually was (hard to believe, but true!). I read the extracts and I was immediately sold, not just because I have got a weak spot for London, but also because of the book itself. What's so special about The Dream of the Decade? The answer is: its technical aspect and the ever-present topic the book covers. As far as the structure of the book is concerned, I really like the intellectually challenging changes in the narration techniques among the four novels. In this way it seems like they are separate pieces, though they share certain common characters. The other strong point of the book is its theme. The Dream of the Decade certainly makes you stop and think about the way you live your life and about the world around you. Its irony and bitter reflection about the past decade points out the climate still present in our world, now maybe even more than ever: decadence, hate, racism, xenophobia and hypocrisy of the media. Moreover, Afshin Rattansi perfectly verbalizes the feelings and the dilemmas of the thirty-something generation. In her Nobel Prize acceptance speech Toni Morrison quoted a story about a blind lady giving a bird to a couple of children and saying "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands." The "bird" that the reader receives from Afshin Rattansi is very much alive and I sincerely hope that it is not the last we hear from him.

The Dream of the Decade. Novels and Politics

The book "The Dream of the Decade. The London Novels" consists of four novels, treating themes such as the rise and fall of a working class man who became successful temporary, terrorism, property prices, and the media. The scene of all four novels is, of course, London. I did not grow up in London, so I cannot talk of recognizing personal experience, but growing up in London is in no way an essential condition in order to enjoy the book. The themes and the characters are not limited to London. The characters are not stereotypical characters of the time described in the novels; one can recognize exactly these characters today, they are very much with us in today's society. Another fact that I found particularly interesting is the author's dealing with politics. He sees politics in everything, it is a fascinating observation, and I personally liked it a lot. He manages to write about politics without turning his book into sort of political advice. He writes about politics in a very careful way, and he does not want to force the reader on a certain opinion or a way of thinking. He does not try to correct the system endlessly, as many other modern writers want to do in their works. He writes about politics in an amazing way. This is a quality I highly admire, a quality, many other writers today simply don't have. While reading the book I constantly felt the current meaning of the themes. Especially the second part seems to touch the current situation. The terrorism scene described remembered me strongly to the current terrorism threat. It might be the author's background that makes one think so, but there might be other reasons, too. One way or another, he manages to develop a very interesting atmosphere throughout the book. His style of writing is amazing, the book is written brilliantly. It was a great pleasure to read this book!

Did Bush try to bomb Al Jazeera ? This book is by an Al Jazeera Producer.

Even Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair writer and cheerleader for George Bush and the neocons, is outraged about news of the U.S. President's intention to destroy Al Jazeera's headquarters in the Middle East. If Hitchens was once a doyenne of careful polemic (Mother Theresa, Henry Kissinger), he isn't now. In fact, in the sideswipe he takes in his latest piece for Slate magazine, he casts doubt on the fairness of Al Jazeera Arabic. Perhaps he should take a look at the latest quartet by former Al Jazeera producer Afshin Rattansi who worked on the programme strand that first revealed the criminals who carried out the 9-11 massacres in the Eastern United States. Entitled "The Dream of the Decade - The London Novels", Rattansi - who launched a channel in the Middle East and worked at BBC's Today programme before leaving amidst the crisis caused by the death of WMD scientist, Dr. David Kelly - draws the victims of terrorism or the threat of terrorism with the utmost care. He picks a London basement bar, under siege from a bombscare. But why it is interesting to invoke the name of Hitchens is that the other novels -thematically based on the issues of private finance, wealth distribution under Mrs. Thatcher, terrorism, property and the media - each feature some of the old Hitchens bite. They resurrect a quality that Hitchens' new foe, George Galloway ,who so splendidly destroyed the presidential ambitions of Senator Norm Coleman, ascribed to Hitch, himself - something about eloquence and the left.

From Al Jazeera?

Publishers of Amis, Rushdie, McEwan, Murakami, Saramago, Ackroyd, Tremain and Theroux praise former Al Jazeera journalist for new collection of novels published in one volume under the title "The Dream of the Decade". For the first time, a journalist from Al Jazeera has published a work of fiction - though the Arabic Tv station's detractors might have it another way. The Dream of the Decade - a quartet of novels - is out in one volume published by U.S. publisher, Booksurge. It's a big tome that charts the lives of Londoners when the gaps between rich and poor are inexorably rising, even as the lives of the rich are becoming fabulously wealthy. Released on 1 February 2006, it treats the fear and loathing of terrorism only in one novel, head on, in an account of Londoners trapped in a bar during a bombscare. Though there is no mention of Al Qaeda, it is the background of the author that makes one think that the fear is post 9/11. The book itself is praised by Dan Franklin, publisher of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan who says that Rattansi "captures the atmosphere of the late 1980s." Christopher MacLehose, the publisher of Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami, Georges Perec and José Saramago, said that he could still feel the force of "The Dream of the Decade." It's no wonder as the ambitions of the novels are large. The first and title novel charts the downfall of a stereotypical working-class-made-good-under-Thatcher yuppie as he begins to learn what British society lost as it gained. The third is about Londoners' - and even Los Angeles-residents' - perplexing relationship with property. The final novel, entitled, "Good Morning, Britain" examines the travails of an ingenue at a big television station, learning and prospering as he produces news for the populace. It should be noted that Rattansi produced for the BBC's Today programme which was caught up in the Weapons of Mass Destruction fiasco when Andrew Gilligan reported that the British government has "sexed up" a dossier to persuade the UK parliament to vote for the Iraq War. Rattansi worked on Al Jazeera's flagship programme, "Top Secret" and given the Arabic language station's ability to source material where no media outlet has contacts, one can only imagine what assignments the author must have undertaken. He won a Sony Award for his outstanding contribution to media in 2002, shortly after setting up an international 24 hour news station in the Middle East. The quartet begins with a reflection by one of the female characters in the book, the love of the first novel's protaganist, as she holidays in the Maldives ahead of the Asian Tsunami. It is when you imagine the scope of such a book, its themes, its politics and its emotional range allied to the quality of writing which impressed so many of Britain's arbiters of literary prowess, that you begin to understand what an event publication of "The Dream of the Decade - The London Novels" really is.

Novel Al Jazeera Man

NOVEL AL JAZEERA MAN "The Dream of the Decade" comes with high praise. Dan Franklin, publisher of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan is an admirer of the book and says that 30-something Rattansi "captures the atmosphere of the late 1980s." But with the first British publication of this quartet, it's easy to see that these characters are very much living with us today. It's always difficult for a new novelist to break through the household literary name strata. And, often, more difficult for the aspiring writer is answering questions as to what their work is about. J. D. Salinger would have found it difficult to describe immediately why the plot of "Catcher in the Rye" was inherently interesting. Norman Mailer would have had trouble with "An American Dream". It's the "hook" books like "A Handmaiden's Tale" or "The Satanic Verses" that are altogether easier. There are hooks in Afshin Rattansi's debut novels, four of them published in one volume and all loosely connected, not least that they centre on life in London. The first book is about the growing divide between rich and poor just as balsamic vinegar was becoming fashionable amongst the new yuppie class. There follows a book on how Londoners respond to a terrorist bomb scare and another on how property prices began to dominate life in London. The final book is a very thinly disguised satire, or what looks like a satire, on news values at the BBC. But what unites the quartet is an ineluctable quality of the writing. The thirty something British-born writer, whose Kenyan father is an expert on Sir Isaac Newton and alchemy, is slightly dismissive of the publication of the book. "I went through two agencies, Curtis Brown and A.P. Watt and I can't say I was helped much and now it's twenty years on," he says about to pull another cigarette from a packet on the table and then replacing it. "I think publishers in the eighties and earlier nineties were more interested in my Indian origin than the subject matter of the book." The first chapters of the first book were written at a time of resurgent Commonwealth writing. Rattansi, himself, worked on stories about Salman Rushdie during the Satanic Verses affair when he was on Tariq Ali's groundbreaking Channel 4 series, Bandung File. Dressed in fashionable jeans and a black T-shirt, Rattansi is sitting in a Chateau Marmont seat after being interviewed by Los Angeles' most progressive radio station, KPFK. On the same programme was the now dead activist and former co-founder of LA's notorious Crips gang, Stanley "Tookie" Williams whose clemency pleas didn't prevent him from being injected with Sodium Pentothal. "Los Angeles has always fascinated me and it was Mike Davis' book, City of Quartz, that enlightened me so much as to why. Whereas London is two organisms, the centre and the suburbs, Los Angeles is a myriad directly opposing entities. It has a sophisticated left, a developing world level population, a strong harbour union, fabulous colo