Learn to write from an admirable book

A writing practice during the class of Prof. Fu

Learn to write from an admirable book –
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

The Looming Tower is a nonfiction work depicting the rise of Al-Qaeda and its road to 9/11. Published in 2006, with a total of 13 years’ investigation, the book swept a series of awards and won Pulitzer Prize the same year, yet still quite little-known for people who show no interest in Geopolitics or the Middle East. Whereas it is an addictive poison for someone outside the Islamic world who grabs the huge curiosity and finds the book revealing the mystery of Osama Bin Laden, together with the squad of the Jihadism, looming from the other side of the planet. One may be amazed, bewildered, sympathetic, or resentful towards a similar but distinct human being.

No matter how esoteric the content would be, literature that began with a well-known element would always be a good way to attract attention and evoke curiosities. Unsealing the book, a scene leaps to the eyes where an FBI agent drives ahead an intelligence station. Even if the audience knows nothing about Islam, he or she would largely hear of the FBI and wonder what to do with this grave organization, till the brisk emergence of the notorious name Bin Laden, evoking another point of interest.

As nonfiction, its words are plain, ungarnished, but very informative. Every sentence is fresh. Linked by the book, you could have magically gone through the whole life of Sayyid Qutb, conjecturing his stubborn conservation may be from his miserable childhood or somehow just the disabled of DNAs, and worried why he could not think like yourself. They like to make a long name after as many generations as they can, then you could delineate the coincidence of three al-Zawahiri, four Mohammed, and five Abu. You could also learn how arrogant the FBI could be, and the infighting between the FBI and CIA would blow the minds of the heroical figure in the popular movies.

Besides, it was not until 2014 that the Chinese version of the book came off the press. Half of its success spread in Chinese-spoken countries should be attributed to the vivid translation. The pitch of reading in Chinese is fluent, and the most important is that the reading would not remind one of any hint of its translation.

Finally, to conclude the success of the writing of this book, we would say it is the attractive beginning, the real informative stories and the depth into religion and ideology.