An Arab journalist interviews an American rock star who has become a demagogic focal point in a declining post-imperial world.
This has fascinating and troubling contemporary echoes – written in 1989, it would have been eerily prescient if it had been written in 2019. The world it imagines, with America in decline but grasping for an imagined glorious past while other centers of power emerge, feels closer to our world today than it would have 30 years ago.