CONWAY, Ark. (June 20, 2017) – Retired Hendrix politics and international relations professor Dr. Ian King has completed his third novel, Siren
Song: Har Megiddo 2.0. It is available in
paperback and on
Kindle.
The inspiration for Siren Song emerged from a short story King wrote for Hope Coulter’s Creative Writing class at Hendrix.
“She asked us to write something in epistolary form,” King said. “I chose a sort of journal entry by a woman held in captivity in a cellar of an abandoned house in Rotherham, England. It was based on an actual case.”
For the novel, the expanded story became an investigation of several people lured into both state- and jihadi-inspired terrorism.
“In the end, I hope it engages readers to think about the state of our current world, and why we have ended up where we seem to be,” he says.
Synopsis
of Siren Song: Har Megiddo 2.0 from
Amazon.com:
The War on Terror is in full swing. Millions are indiscriminately swept up in its Siren Song, from presidents to playful children. The president of the United States is morally torn between his humanitarianism and his constitutional duty to protect his citizens;
Mo, a wretched youth, is waylaid by the treacherous teachings of his imam in prison; Ayaan, a lost soul, is lured into a romanticism of cataclysmic proportions on the Internet; Imam Khalifa struggles with his piety in the face those whom he is charged with saving. All are witnessed by the Supreme Being,
who despairs of them all. For the Love of God, apparently, the world is thrown into nihilistic turmoil, threatening Har Megiddo (Armageddon) 2.0. The question is posed: how did we come to this?
About
Dr. Ian King
Born a British citizen in 1951, Ian King served five years in the Royal Navy as a hydrographic surveyor. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1998. His 26 years of teaching international relations and comparative politics at Hendrix focused on East
Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. King retired as a distinguished professor of politics and international relations in 2011. He then began writing fiction, and in December 2016 he completed his MFA in Creative Writing at the Queens University of Charlotte. His two previous novels, published in
2014, are The Last Eucharist: A True War
Story, and Leaves in the Wind: A
Novel of the Dirty Wars.
About
Hendrix College
Hendrix College is a private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas. Founded in 1876 and affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884, Hendrix is featured in Colleges That
Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges and is nationally recognized in numerous college guides, lists, and rankings for academic quality, community, innovation, and value. For more information, visit
www.hendrix.edu.