Description

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My Friend the Fanatic is a portrait of the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, and the fourth most populous nation in the World. A nation once synonymous with tolerance that now finds itself in the midst of a profound shift toward radical Islam. The portrait is painted through the travels of a pair of unlikely protagonists. Sadanand Dhume, the author, is a foreign correspondent—a Princeton-educated Indian atheist with a fondness for literary fiction and an interest in economic development. His companion, Herry Nurdi, is a young Islamist who hero worships Osama bin Laden. Their travels span mosques and discotheques, prison cells and dormitories, sacred volcanoes and temple ruins.

About the Author

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Sadanand Dhume is a Washington, DC–based writer and a nonresident fellow at the Asia Society. His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Commentary, and Foreign Policy. He has appeared on CNN, PBS, NPR, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Dhume holds graduate degrees from Princeton and Columbia and a bachelor’s from the University of Delhi. My Friend the Fanatic is his first book.