In his debut novel Al-Tounsi, critically acclaimed Canadian-American author and playwright Anton Piatigorsky tells the behind-the-scenes story of U.S. Supreme Court justices as they consider a landmark case involving the rights of detainees held in a Guantanamo Bay-like overseas military base. It explores how the personal lives, career rivalries, and political sympathies of these legal titans blend with their philosophies to create the most important legal decisions of our time.
Given the current U.S. political climate, Al-Tounsi could not be more topical or relevant.
Jon Malysiak, director of the ABA’s Ankerwycke Books, spoke with Piatigorsky in a conversation that touches on everything from the right of habeus corpus to similarities between the fictional justices and their real-life counterparts to differences between the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts. He also explores how the author, born and educated in the U.S. and currently living in Toronto, came to write a novel with so many parallels to current political debate. Constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky has praised Al-Tounsi as “…a powerful reminder that justices are human and that, as much as the law, determines how important cases are decided.”