The Cyclist
A Novel
Somewhere in the Middle East, an aspiring terrorist has been entrusted with a mission that will reverberate around the world: to deliver a bomb to a hotel in Beirut, where the detonation will destroy hundreds of innocent lives. If he remains true to his cause, he will bring about his own death. Yet life holds such tantalizing delights: food (his secret vice), the heady pleasures of bicycle racing, the joys of unexpected love. As the days count down to the final, chilling moment of reckoning, this angst-ridden gourmand ponders his existential quandary -- with horrifying and hilarious results.
A slyly subversive black comedy about a food-fixated terrorist who dreams of liberation through a world of eroticism and sensuality, The Cyclist combines absurdist humor and edgy lyricism to tell a provocative, page-turning tale of individual freedom and political violence.
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Book details:
- Simon & Schuster |
- 192 pages |
- ISBN 9780743249393 |
- June 2003
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Chapter 1
You should always wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. The helmet should fit snugly. The chin strap should hold firmly against the throat. The buckle should be fastened securely. Consider this: last year there were 11 bike accidents in Iceland, 371 in France and 97 in England. I have no statistics from Holland, but surely, if I had been riding my bicycle on its flat land, I would have been spared my tragedy.
The same cannot be said about my place of origin. Nothing could have prepared me for it. Not even the helmet I took on my impossible tour from Mount Barouk to Beirut: a 71-kilometer calamitous road with a...
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