Book review: The Exile by Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy
This is more a brief take than review.
Who was OBL? Savant? Monster? Sage? The horcrux of all evil? A person with illusions of grandeur trapped in the gaze of his mirror?
Or maybe a man who set something in motion and watched as it took a shape of its own and rapidly mutated away from its creator. A man who was unable to view the happenings of 9/11 simply because he was in a cave in Afghanistan and of course, satellite connectivity was near nil…talk of exquisite irony! A man so self-absorbed, it should both surprise and not surprise the reader.
The Exile is a gripping read. It shines a klieg light directly on OBL and al-Qaida in the time between 9/11 and the man`s capture and death in Abbotabad. Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy use their brisk reporting style to lay out the facts about OBL`s travel trajectory in this period, Iran`s covert but deadly role in things ( really the meat of the matter in this book), the rise of ISIS and of course, just how many of the Pakistani top brass was really in the know of things.
Like I said, a gripping, compelling, good read.
Sheila Kumar • July 21, 2017