A decade after his death, with all his books back in print, Edward Whittemore remains pretty much off the literary radar.
Whittemore was an ex-CIA agent who made the people, history and landscapes of the Middle East the subject matter of a series of remarkable novels. His books aren’t always fantasy (although they were often marketed as such) yet they contain fantastical elements; they’re frequently comic yet contain moments of pure horror; they’re witty, sexy, incredibly inventive and quite unique. They also provide another example of genre readers and writers nurturing the memory and reputation of an author the wider literary world has never heard of. Michael Moorcock and Jeff VanderMeer have both spoken highly of Whittemore in recent years and with the republication of his books in 2002 he now has access to a new generation of readers.
Anne Sydenham’s Whittemore site, Jerusalem Dreaming, has just moved to a new location and is an excellent source of information about the man and his work.