Synopses & Reviews
The Cyclist is a stunningly original novel about food and political violence. It's a psychological ride into the tropics of terror, to the edges of our national and existential borders: the ones set at birth, the ones we are born into. The enigmatic narrator is a young trainee of the Academy, a terrorist group in the present-day Middle East. This unnamed, transnational pawn has a single mission: to deliver a bomb by bicycle to a hotel, where it will explode, killing hundreds of civilians. But his story is anything but simple. Combining surrealism, tragedy and humor, The Cyclist is a journey into the unsettling workings of the terrorist mind. Even as the narrator ponders his mission, only his musings about food and love reveal clues to his nationality and his agenda. But can such a zestful connoisseur also be a true agent of political violence? Witty and wildly inventive, The Cyclist is a remarkable debut from a gifted novelist.
Review
"Very few authors have attempted a narrative portrayal concerning the relationship of a terrorist to the act of terror he feels compelled to commit. In his first novel, Viken Berberian masterfully tackles this notion, inviting the reader to follow the transnational (his background is purposefully ambiguous) and unnamed narrator as he explores his own passions and inclination toward terrorism. Using food as a metaphor, the idiosyncratic narrator comments upon the cycle of violence that exists today, questioning why certain people are sacrificed and subjected as 'food' for others. Over the course of deftly written and intertwined vignettes.
Berberian's narrator slowly begins to question this vicious cycle while lying in a hospital bed after a biking accident (his other passion, aside from food). He relays the events that drove him to join the terrorist organization 'The Academy,' as well as the task he has been assigned after his recovery—the delivery of a bomb to a hotel during his participation in in Beruit's largest bicycle race. Through the narrator's love of food and his girlfriend, Ghaemi, Berberian offers a disturbing, insightful, and well-written look into the mind of someone asked to sacrifice his own life for the sustenance of others." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
Eric Bogosian
author of Mall
Seductive, insidious, upsetting and ultimately satisfying. Berberian captures the Middle East with his descriptions of indigenous delicacies, humanizing and revealing the type of person I need to know more about right now. He shows us how youth mixed with power is an intoxicating cocktail.
About the Author
Viken Berberian lives in New York City. This is his first novel.