(openPR) - The literary landscape of London has been drawn memorably by Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf and Harold Pinter. In 2006, "The Dream of the Decade - The London Novels" by former Al Jazeera "Top Secret" producer and BBC Today programme producer, Afshin Rattansi is set to change the landscape again.

This is a literary book that focuses squarely on issues that go to the core of Londoners' lives: Property prices, crime, terrorism and wealth disparity. The volume contains four books about London:

The Dream of the Decade
Reproach
A Taste of Money
Good Morning, Britain

The book itself is praised by Dan Franklin, publisher of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan who says that Rattansi "captures the atmosphere of the late 1980s." Christopher MacLehose, the publisher of Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami, Georges Perec and José Saramago, said that he could still feel the force of "The Dream of the Decade."

It's no wonder as the ambitions of the novels are large. The first and title novel charts the downfall of a stereotypical working-class-made-good-under-Thatcher yuppie as he begins to learn what British society lost as it gained. The third is about Londoners' perplexing relationship with property. The final novel, entitled, "Good Morning, Britain" examines the travails of an ingénue at a big television station, learning and prospering as he produces news for the populace.

It is "Reproach", the second book in this volume, that has attracted most attention in the United States. Rattansi, after leaving Today amidst the furore over the death of government scientist, David Kelly, worked for Al Jazeera's flagship strand "Top Secret" which identified the perpetrators of 9/11. In Reproach, he details the lives of Londoners trapped in a London bar as they get to grips with a bombscare.

In "A Taste of Money", Rattansi looks at the effects of those involved in property development - from the homeless to those speculating on London's ever-increasing prices.

Afshin Rattansi is available for interview during the "A Book for Every Londoner" campaign announced by the London Libraries Development Agency which runs between 1-16 March 2006.


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Edward Victor
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