The release date for the English version of 'The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11' by
Lawrence Wright is Aug 2006. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
An extensive narrative history of the occasions leading up to 9/11, a novel examination of the concepts and personalities involved, the preparations for terrorism, and the shortcomings of Western intelligence that resulted in the attack on America. Five years of study and hundreds of interviews conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States formed the basis for Lawrence Wright's outstanding book.
By narrating the story through the interwoven lives of four men—Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the two leaders of al-Qaeda; John O'Neill, the FBI's counterterrorism chief; and Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence—The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight.
As these lives develop, we learn about the following: the current Islamic currents that radicalized Zawahiri and bin Laden; the formation of al-Qaeda and its shaky growth into an organization capable of the USS Cole attack and the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; O'Neill's valiant pursuit of al-Qaeda prior to 9/11 and his untimely death in the World Trade Towers; Prince Turki's shift from being bin Laden's ally to his enemy; and the FBI, CIA, and NSA's failures to share intelligence that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
By bringing us behind the scenes, The Looming Tower expands and enriches our understanding of these signal occurrences. This picture depicts Sayyid Qutb, the father of the modern Islamist movement, looking lonely and hopeless as he encounters Western culture in 1940s America; it also shows the affluent upbringings of bin Laden and Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda compounds in Sudan and Afghanistan; O'Neill's tightrope act in juggling his intensely focused career with his equally complex personal life—he lived with three women, none of whom knew the other existed—and the specifics of U.S. intelligence agency turf wars.
The Looming Tower is a masterfully written and constructed novel that combines all the aspects of the story into a compelling narrative that significantly advances our knowledge of how September 11, 2001 came to be. We can respond to the ongoing terrorist threat more sensibly and successfully thanks to the depth of its observations and the richness of its fresh information.