The Tyrant's Novel

The author of Schindler's List examines a more contemporary instance of people trying to survive in the ethical quagmire of totalitarianism. The protagonist is Alan Sheriff, a writer living in a nameless desert country ruled by a despot who styles himself the "Great Uncle" and who bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain recently deposed dictator.

A member of the Westernized cultural elite with a fat book contract from Random House, Alan feels himself immune from the political pressures and poverty surrounding him. Then one day he is whisked off to receive a commission from the tyrant himself: to ghostwrite a novel for Great Uncle that will undermine support for sanctions in the West—on a quite literal one-month deadline.

Fearing for himself and his friends, torn between remaining in his gilded cage or striking out for a precarious existence abroad, Alan must make agonizing compromises with the truth and his art.