Narrating the Terrorist: Authorial Intent and Perpetrator Representation in Post-9/11 American Fiction

Abstract

Despite the pervasive cultural fixation surrounding terrorism after 9/11, most American fiction continues to rely on heterodiegetic narration that distances readers from perpetrator subjectivity and reinforces reductive clichés of Islamic extremism, fanaticism, and moral incomprehensibility. This study interrogates the representation of terrorist-perpetrators in four post-9/11 American novels The Garden of Last Days, Terrorist, American Taliban, and Atta through McGlothin’s framework of narrative voice and empathetic identification. Through close textual analysis, the study demonstrates how three of the novels reproduce dominant cultural imaginaries, offering only superficial accounts of radicalisation and obscuring the psychological and contextual factors behind perpetration. In contrast, Atta employs auto-diegetic narration to provide rare access to a perpetrator’s consciousness, challenging conventional literary taboos surrounding empathetic engagement. The article highlights the limitations of homogenized or clichéd understandings of perpetration in Western literary and cultural discourse.