Story

The LA Times reviews Jason Motlagh's work on the Mumbai Attacks in the Virginia Quarterly Review

From Nov. 26 to 29, 2008, 10 gunmen wielded guns, grenades and terror in the Indian city of Mumbai. Acting in five teams of two, they killed 163 people and wounded 300 others in attacks on sites including a train station, two elite hotels, a Jewish center, a hospital and the city's streets. All of the gunmen were young Pakistani Muslims; all but one were killed by authorities. The lone survivor, who has pleaded guilty, attends his trial, which continues a year after the attacks.

All this happened far away from the offices of the literary magazine the Virginia Quarterly Review, but when editor Ted Genoways talked to contributor Jason Motlagh about the attacks, he felt there was a story to tell that went deeper than the TV news stories we'd seen. Motlagh, a journalist working in South Asia, had previously written for VQR about India and had a wealth of contacts there. What the two decided should be written about Mumbai would go beyond standard reporting, "something that would be closer to literary nonfiction than traditional journalism -- or even 'new journalism.' " Genoways writes. "This would not be the story of Jason's journey in the wake of disaster but a straightforward narrative of what happened in Mumbai."