BANNED JIHAD NOVEL IS FICTIONALIZED REAL LIFE

The banned novel JIHAD REDISCOVERED by CHANDER MEHRA is based on the true-life experiences of the author interacting with an American heiress, a British journalist and a real-life undercover CIA operative. The author draws from his, his girlfriend and the two other naive idealists joining the headstrong Hari Nath Rai in his quest for the scoop of the century about.

They are up against the wile Khalifa Hasham Alim Alah's cunning commander-in-chief leading a movement to incapacitate the non-Islamic world.

Hari is a media-freedom freak chief editor of Verdict Today, the newspaper which prided himself on being free, fair, fearless, forthright and first. His clashes with Prime Minister Mandira are reminiscent of a real recent Indian Prime Minister. His own managing director, saccharin-tongued Karan.is none other than the author's own boss (since deceased), an out and out fifth columnist.

Like the author, the swashbuckling editor is often thrown in the tyrants's dungeons. of depravity..

The story opens with one such detention: Hari is being grilled as a suspect about an attempt on the life of the Pope while the editor is interviewing about Sharia creeping over the West.

He is also extremely sensitive and is nauseated by the antics of dictators.

Hari's first detention in New Delhi is an almost exact replica of theauthor's experience in Nairobi, Kenya, where, having been declared Prohibited Immigrant, he is detained without trial while members of the author's family look for him hospitals and mortuaries. The author returns to melodrama.to his house, takes an enormous drink and walks into the shower, staying there an hour, fumigating himself.

On the dining table, the author scribbles a few lines which are reprduced in the first chapter:

Again, I saw, With my eyes, The stench of decay Of human values. I touched it and became unclean, The lingering odor of suffoc souls.