Reimagining Traitors: Pearl Abraham's<i>American Taliban</i>and the Case of John Walker Lindh

Abstract

Pearl Abraham's 2010 novelAmerican Talibanuses the “true” story of John Walker Lindh, a white US citizen captured fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, to reflect on the intense mediation of public trauma in the early days of the “War on Terror.” This article discusses the significance ofAmerican Talibanas a post-“9/11” work of literary fiction which, by imagining individual agency and interrogating the relationship between a racialized “Americanness,” treason and sovereignty, invites its readers to be critical of historical, political and media narratives in the so-called “post-truth era.”</jats:p