22 Saturday 15 August 2015 The Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph Saturday 15 August 2015 23 BOOKS

a tramp) who claims to be his Islamic Militancy, Burke traces father, has an icky relationship The leaderless how the ideologues of terror with his mother and may or may argued first that murder in What’s his not be mad. defence of their faith was Wolf is not just Hamlet, permissible, then obligatory, then however; he’s darker and dirtier jihad positively glorious. Even a decade than that, more like Crime and or so ago, the sacrifice of civilians Punishment’s Raskolnikov in heat. was seen as a necessary evil. Now In his 20s, he earns a reputation as slaughter is embraced for secret? a dissident for writing an indelicate slaughter’s sake, even if it is of poem insulting the GDR. He is fellow Muslims. protected from the Stasi by his This global (and globalised) influential parents but at the cost of community of terrorists and them severing contact with him; he sympathisers – what Burke calls ends up living in the basement of a “the movement” – is also church, working as a counsellor for frighteningly modern. Its vulnerable adolescents. Through disparate members speak the this work he meets Annagret Robert Colvile on a new age of global terrorism same language of bloodshed and (later Pip’s recruiter). Wolf feels hate on their internet forums and for her a purity of love that he that is low-tech, homegrown and unpredictable Twitter accounts – and use hopes will allow him to escape technology not just to talk to each his sinister thoughts and general nature has changed. It is now a less other, but to publicise their work. ennui. That’s when things start to THE NEW THREAT organised, more sporadic threat. Burke describes how Osama get interesting. FROM ISLAMIC But it is also terrifyingly modern in bin Laden, in the days before 9/11, The third narrative strand MILITANCY its methods and, in many was forced to dispatch his concerns Leila Helou, a star by Jason Burke marginalised communities, rambling diatribes to al-Jazeera Righteous fury and old-fashioned investigative reporter for The increasingly embedded. via VHS, where they lingered in Denver Independent, and Tom 304PP, BODLEY HEAD, the general in-tray. Compare that storytelling fuel Jonathan Franzen’s Aberant, her editor. Leila is £13.99, EBOOK £6.99 oday’s Islamic terrorists are to Isil, with their YouTube-ready Duncan White technically married to a past- Tnot, Burke says, “lone atrocities – or Merah, who edited darkly funny novel, says his-best experimental novelist wolves”, any more than their the footage of his slaughter into but she lives with Tom, himself predecessors were. In virtually Not only is she an oppressively the survivor of a traumatic, ÌÌÌÌÌ every case, they have drawn on PURITY needy hypochondriac, but she also suffocating marriage. n March 2012, in the south of support from militant networks The next step is by Jonathan Franzen refuses to tell Pip who her father is: All these characters stagger France, Mohammed Merah overseas, often travelling abroad live-streaming: “Every so often, [Pip] felt the need under the weight of the secrets put on a helmet, got on a for training. Yet where the al- 576PP, FOURTH ESTATE, to strain against the circumstantial they carry. At one stage Pip has a motorbike and began to kill. Qaeda of old would subject the ultimate in £20, EBOOK £12.99 straitjacket in which she’d found revelation: “She could see – she I First, he killed soldiers: three Western recruits to a rigorous reality terrorism herself two years earlier, to see if thought she could see – that what off-duty paratroopers, two of curriculum of bomb-making and there might be a little new give in adults did was suck it up and keep them Muslim. A week later, he tradecraft, today’s unholy warriors the sleeves. And, every time, she their secrets to themselves. Her killed four more people at a Jewish are usually just shown which end an internet-friendly “greatest ÌÌÌÌÌ found it exactly as tight as before.” mother, a grey-haired child in so school in Toulouse, including a of an AK-47 is which and sent on hits” package, complete with his novel contains Then Pip catches a break. many ways, was an adult in this rabbi and his two sons, aged six their way with a pat on the back. graphics and soundtrack. Such multitudes: Annagret, a beautiful young one regard at least. She kept her and three. The younger, already The bulk of their support, in coverage not only emboldens love, murder, German radical, tries to recruit her secrets and paid the price.” wounded, was shot dead as he tried other words, comes not from supporters, but intimidates marital terrorism, for the Sunlight Project, a Grown-ups understand the to crawl towards his father. After overseas sponsors, but a source enemies. The next obvious step is T embarrassing sex, WikiLeaks-type organisation importance of privacy; kids stick it French police tracked Merah to his closer to home. In case after case, live-streaming: the ultimate in nasty sex, solo sex, headquartered in Bolivia. The all on Facebook. The analogy flat and gunned him down in a Burke shows how young men who “reality terrorism”. the Stasi, internet leaks, missing project is run by a charismatic extends to Wolf and the Sunlight firefight, they found that his became killers were part of The question Burke sets nuclear weapons, missing transparency zealot called Andreas Project, who publish vast troves of extensive arsenal included three communities that subsisted on a himself in this book is simple: fathers, overbearing mothers Wolf (a better-looking Julian data online without discrimination, Colt 45s, two submachine guns, a diet of prejudice, ignorance and “Who are the people who are and a variety of interesting Assange) who promises to use his as opposed to Tom and Leila at The set of body armour and a GoPro victimhood. Merah’s older brother trying to kill us?” The only bowel disorders. What you hacking resources to help Pip find Denver Independent, who publish body-camera, with which he had Abdelkader denied any criticism is that he fails then to won’t find much of is purity. her father. She is flattered but only what they believe serves the filmed his every action. involvement in the killings but told ask: “How do we stop them?” He Just as Franzen’s previous novel reluctant; the Sunlight Project public interest and only after When Jason Burke, a veteran the police that he was “very proud” lays out clearly the type of people Freedom was really a book sounds “possibly cultish” and she rigorous fact-checking and foreign correspondent for the of his brother and regretted who are drawn to the new form of about inescapable constraint, can’t abandon her mother, “the corroboration of sources. Guardian and Observer, wrote his “nothing”. Their sister Souad, extremism: undereducated, so Purity is really a book about massive block of granite at the Franzen is well known for his 2011 book on Islamic terrorism, The although she later publicly underemployed young men, inevitable corruption (which centre of her life”. Then, in one of rants about the assault on privacy 9/11 Wars, it seemed as if the threat condemned his acts, was filmed trapped on the fringes. Yet he makes it a considerably more those scenes that Franzen does in the digital age. Is the author from al-Qaeda might finally be on without her knowledge by a offers no suggestion as to how we enticing prospect). better than pretty much anybody, himself not in danger of groping the wane. In its place, however, has French television station saying To order this can prevent them from coming to Those who read The Pip comprehensively humiliates after a kind of purity here? Is this risen a new movement, described she was “proud” of her brother, book from the share the values that motivated Corrections and Freedom will herself in making a pass at just polemic dressed up as fiction? by Western leaders in equally and that she “detested” Jews. To Telegraph for Mohammed Merah, and so many know how Franzen novels work: Stephen, the married man. apocalyptic terms: the Islamic talk about terrorists such as Merah £14.99 plus others, to set about their grisly people, often well intentioned, Suddenly, anywhere but Oakland State, known as Isil. And instead of being “radicalised”, says Burke, is £1.99 p&p, call work. Without that, the virus can launch themselves into the world seems appealing. No argument is grandiose spectaculars such as as misleading as to claim their 0844 871 1515 never be cured, only contained. with idealistic conviction (To be Franzen is not a transparency allowed to win, and 9/11, 7/7 or the Atocha bombings in peers are “radicalised” into liking free! To be pure!) and are snapped zealot, however. He knows, like Spain, we are confronted by the particular music or football teams. Robert Colvile’s The Great back to misery by the tethers of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, who nobody escapes threat of “leaderless jihad” – But how did homegrown Self-promoting: Acceleration will be published family and society. His are blackly persuades the women of Athens to complicity unpredictable, low-tech, self- terrorism become so virulent? In Mohammed by Bloomsbury next year comic books about the souring of refuse their husbands sex until MERRITT WESLEY starting atrocities such as Merah’s the course of The New Threat from Merah in 2012 great expectations. they make peace with Sparta, that attacks in Toulouse, or the So meet Pip. She’s a recent there is power in withholding. He If it is, then, as Franzen has argued the novelist trumps Franzen the relationship with his parents, his own “very hermetic marriage”. slaughter of Drummer Lee Rigby graduate with a lousy job and vast ends that section of the novel elsewhere, it would be in violation polemicist. No argument is allowed failed marriage – in his first two These scenes are sublimely in Woolwich in 2013. debts. She lives in a dive in without telling us of Pip’s final of the contract with the reader that to win; nobody escapes complicity; books (The Twenty-Seventh City and excruciating and, in the character So which is the more pressing Oakland and is in love with an decision. Indeed, the first three of there be “no bait-and-switch going nobody is pure. The very idea that Strong Motion), but did so in his of the wife, Franzen consolidates danger, al-Qaeda or Isil? For activist called Stephen, “an older Purity’s seven sections end with on, no instruction masquerading we need to toughen up and keep hugely successful third and fourth his reputation as the creator of anyone who has explored Isil’s guy who not only didn’t believe good old-fashioned cliffhangers. as entertainment”. secrets is undermined by the way novels, The Corrections and some of literature’s most history – outlined, for example, in in money – as in US currency; as They are also mediated through Sometimes he does appear to the story is being told: as a reading Freedom. compellingly irritating characters. Empire of Fear by the BBC reporter in the mere possession of it – but different characters: the violate the terms. The supermodel experience, Purity is all about the In drafting both those books, he Some would include Franzen’s Andrew Hosken – there is no also had a wife”. Like her cumulative effect is horoughlyt interns who float around Wolf ’s revelation of secrets. That’s the had to cut a character called Andy public persona in that group. He is doubting its savagery, or its Dickensian namesake, Pip does addictive. Switching voice and Bolivian base are painted with contract: you keep reading, you get Aberant on the grounds that he a grouch, even a misanthrope, who outsized ambition. Yet while not know who her father is but point of view to add a layered pretty broad strokes, as are the to find out. The old pleasure of was “too much like me”. So when a has somehow been perceived both Burke’s new study of Islamic hopes if she finds him, he might depth to his characters, drawing Occupy radicals who boast about trafficking in forbidden knowledge Tom Aberant arrives in Purity, you as a snob and as a sell-out. He militancy offers an excellent pay off her debt out of guilt. them both from the outside and the their commitment to solidarity but has not diminished. know something’s up. If you’ve bangs on about privacy, but account of Isil’s rise, and its Only Pip’s real name is not inside, is a technique Franzen has won’t share their beer. Late in the also read Franzen’s memoir, The launches his books in a blaze of relationship to its half-parent, half- Pip, it’s Purity. Who could inflict mastered in previous novels. He book, we meet a Silicon Valley his taps into what defines Discomfort Zone, you’ll notice publicity. The things he says make rival al-Qaeda, the “new threat” of such a name on a child? Her makes it look very easy. It isn’t. venture capitalist who records TFranzen, in his own view, as dozens more little autobiographical people hate him, truly, viscerally his title refers in fact to something mother is a New Age recluse The second section takes us to every moment of his life so that he a writer: the determination correspondences (steroidal facial To order this (he once googled himself in 2001 – more nebulous: the ideology that living in a cabin in the woods East Berlin in the Eighties and a can live forever as data in the to go beyond “shame and fear” and swelling; an argument about home book from the never again). He is really into bird inspires people like Merah to near Santa Cruz, where she young Wolf helplessly addicted to cloud. The character is already dredge up the most raw and heating), but it is Aberant’s Telegraph for watching. But when he can write slaughter innocents in the name of spends her time working on her onanism. There are self-conscious ridiculous, but Franzen also makes painful material from his own life. maddening, claustrophobic £16.99 plus novels as funny and furious as Islam. The idea of home-grown “Endeavour” (which involves a references to Hamlet: Wolf is him a gun-happy paedophile. In interviews, he has said that he marriage that clearly dredges the £1.99 p&p, call Purity, none of this seems to extremism is not new. But Burke

lot of breathing and sitting still). approached by “a ghost” (actually Ultimately, however, Franzen couldn’t confront this stuff – his deepest, and draws on Franzen’s 0844 871 1515 matter. argues – convincingly – that its EPA