Osama

In a world where global terrorism never took hold, a private detective named Joe passes his days in Vientiane, Laos, reading cheap pulp paperbacks about a fictional vigilante called Osama Bin Laden. When a mysterious woman hires him to track down Mike Longshott, the elusive author of those books, the search carries Joe out of Laos and into Europe and New York, chasing a writer who seems hardly to exist. Along the way he meets shadowy figures who suggest that his own reality may be thinner than it looks. Lavie Tidhar blends film noir, alternate history and metafiction in a novel about memory, grief and the long reach of real-world violence. First published by PS Publishing in 2011, it won the 2012 World Fantasy Award for best novel.