Borders by Henry Naylor

Borders is the tale of two artists. Sebastian’s a photojournalist. He's just out of uni and in Pakistan at parental expense, when he lands the gig of his life: shooting some crackpot billionaire terrorist – a bore named Bin Laden. By 9/11, he’s one of six westerners to have met him and every celeb wants a piece. Nameless is a Syrian graffiti artist, whose spray-by-night slogans stoke the anti-Assad revolutionaries on. Their stories criss-cross in monologue form: one abandons his integrity by choice, the other’s integrity forces her to flee.

Naylor weaves borders—both physical and figurative—throughout their tales. They’re the walls that become canvases, and the photojournalist’s professional distance. They’re the line between truth and fiction, or journalism and art, and the turning points in history that split time in two: pre- and post-. Naylor’s superb on that last front. He draws a direct line from 9/11 to Syria, ISIS and boats in the Med – one that’s too rarely visible in rolling news close-ups. “He fucking won,” shouts a bleary old hack. “The West is fucked.”

Naylor’s had a few Fringe successes over the years, all examining the Middle East. The Collector went inside an Iraqi prison; Angel honoured the sniper of Kobane. He knows his subject inside out, but while the thinking is strong, the writing is self-conscious – a writer writing, not characters speaking. It slips into staccato, and stories that seem fresh-minted at first often drift into tales we’ve heard too many times – the pregnant refugee out at sea, the professional sell-out enticed by celebrity. You don’t notice the moment one crosses into the other, but once it has, there’s no going back.