What if you’re telling a story, a piece of fiction, a product of the imagination, and if it’s a thriller, some looming catastrophe about to be averted by use of means implausibly distant? How do you make it seem authentic?
One part of it is context: It’s August 2025, two months short of the second anniversary of the day Hamas fighters crossed into Israel and killed a couple of thousand civilians, most of whom were simply enjoying a break in the warm autumn weather. Israel retaliated by attacking Gaza, and we have all heard the running updates on the destruction and deaths that followed almost every day since. Arab-Israeli relations have been somewhere between hostile and horrible since 1948, but this is the worst.
The next, personal part is this: I’m looking for a novel to read and I remember that I had bought one three or four years ago but not opened it. It was written by a former colleague, a journalist whose newswriting and analyses I have long respected, especially about the Middle East. He self-published it, which is not the warning signal it once was, and I trust him. Now that the real-world context is right, I’ll read that. …
Read the rest of Incredibly authentic fiction: Elsner’s The Diplomatic Coup on Substack.
