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

Abstract

Pearl Abraham's 2010 novel American Taliban uses 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 of American Taliban as 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.