The Mosque of Notre Dame

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I am very happy to introduce my book to American readers. This year The Mosque of Notre Dame turned ten years old. So far, it has been published in Russian, Serbian, Polish, Bulgarian, Turkish, and French, and translated into Norwegian. I find it hard to express my appreciation to all the novel’s friends and supporters, whose selfless efforts have made it possible for the book to reach countless new readers around the world.

Still, I am sometimes enveloped by a sense of gloom. I am terrified that we are losing precious time. The danger described in The Mosque of Notre Dame grows every day.

I began writing this novel after the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001, but before the mass murder of schoolchildren in the Russian city of Beslan by Islamic terrorists in 2004. Do most Americans even know about the horrible tragedy of Beslan—those three days during which all Russians sat, glued to their television screens, praying? Chechen Muslim terrorists had attacked a village school and kidnapped more than 700 children, imprisoning them in a stuffy gymnasium built to accommodate 100 people. Before the suspense and horror ended, 333 people, including rescuers, were murdered. Half of those killed—186 of them—were children as young as 9 years old.

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