Randal, Jonathan C. 1933–

PERSONAL: Born 1933.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Washington Post, former correspondent covering the Middle East.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Going All the Way: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers, and the War in Lebanon, Viking Press (New York, NY), 1983, published as The Tragedy of Lebanon: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers, and American Bunglers, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1983.

After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?: My Encounters with Kurdistan, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 1997.

(As Jonathan Randal) Osama: The Making of a Terrorist, Knopf (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: A journalist for four decades, Jonathan C. Randal has written about the trouble spots he covered, from the Middle East to Central Asia to the Balkans. His first book-length work, Going All the Way: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers, and the War in Lebanon, traces the civil war in Lebanon from 1975 up to 1983.

Fourteen years passed between Randal's first and second book, the 1997 After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?: My Encounters with Kurdistan. Here Randal presents a "densely detailed study" of the Kurds, as a reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted. The same contributor also called Randal's account, which detailed his own difficult and sometimes dangerous attempt to report on Kurds, both "thorough and comprehensive." Geraldine Brooks, writing in the New York Times Book Review, characterized After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? as "the product of [Randal's] 30-year quest to understand one of the Middle East's most enigmatic minorities." Brooks noted that Randal traces the history of the Kurdish diaspora and the treatment of Kurdish enclaves in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union. While the Kurds were often enough betrayed by outsiders, they also suffered at the hands of fellow Kurds. "One strength of Randal's book," wrote Brooks, "is his unflinching account of the Kurds' own perfidies." A critic for the Economist called the book "excellent," while the Nation reviewer Tom LeClair felt that "Randal's best chapters are about U.S. involvement in Kurdistan."

Retired in the late 1990s from the Washington Post and from the journalism that had occupied him for over four decades, Randal nonetheless maintained contacts with many of the major actors in the Middle East, where he had spent so much of his career. Using such contacts, in 2004 he produced Osama: The Making of a Terrorist, a book, as Vanessa Bush noted in Booklist, that "offers a detailed and compelling look at the man who has galvanized fears of global terrorism."

Randal based Osama on interviews with people on the ground in the Middle East, from diplomats to radicals to informants. He traces Osama's lineage as the seventeenth of twenty-four sons of a wealthy Saudi construction entrepreneur from his profligate youth to his involvement in Afghanistan and his interest in purifying Islam of Western influences. Bush termed the book both "fascinating" and "absorbing," while a critic for Kirkus Reviews found it a "masterful work of reporting, and of great importance in understanding the rise of modern Islamic terrorism and its singular personification." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly also had praise for Randal's book, noting that it was "full of sharp prose … and shrewd assessments." Ben MacIntyre, reviewing Osama in the New York Times Book Review, described the work as a "meticulous account" that leaves the reader in "horrified awe of what bin Laden has achieved by means of deft public relations, a little money, intense secrecy, careful planning and manipulation of fear and anger."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 27, 2004, Carlo Wolf, review of Osama: The Making of a Terrorist, p. F1.

Booklist, June 1, 1997, Margaret Flanagan, review of After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?: My Encounters with Kurdistan, p. 1652; July, 2004, Vanessa Bush, review of Osama, p. 1796.

Business Week, September 6, 2004, Stanley Reed, review of Osama, p. 24.

Economist (US), July 19, 1997, review of After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?, p. S5.

Hollywood Reporter, June 14, 2002, "Jonathan C. Randal," p. 43.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2004, review of Osama, p. 622.

Library Journal, August, 2004, Nader Entessar, review of Osama, p. 90.

Nation, March 5, 2001, Tom LeClair, "Kingdom of Desire," review of After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?, p. 25.

New York Times Book Review, June 22, 1997, Geraldine Brooks, "A Country That Does Not Exist," review of After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?, p. 23; October 3, 2004, Ben MacIntyre, "The Entrepreneur of Terror," review of Osama, p. 24.

Publishers Weekly, April 7, 1997, review of After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?, p. 79; July 12, 2004, review of Osama, p. 58.

Wall Street Journal, September 2, 2004, Jonathan Karl, review of Osama, p. D16.

Washington Post, December 12, 2002, Glenn Frankel, "Reporter Wins Tribunal Appeal," p. A40.

Washington Post Book World, August 22, 2004, Robert D. Kaplan, "Going to Extremes," review of Osama, p. T6.