I was analyzing it with a student (I teaching English language arts as a tutor), and I only heard the name before. So since I already have a backlog of books and it wasn’t something that I normally seek out, I just read a summary. I found the concept of morbidly fascinating and the writing fantastic, but the subject matter is not something I would dive into outside of an analysis (a bit too dark for me to read for fun). I also looked up summaries of his other works shortly after.

I think it has more meaning to me because I’m someone that grew up as the War on Terror was starting (grew up and I am in the United States, and not directly affected, but I for sure knew what it was and what it meant). So that made it even more profound and I could really empathize with what the people were going through and appreciate what it took for the author to write that. My student was younger, so I’m not sure they did, but I hope it’s a story that continues to get told, and people appreciate and understand what it means.