When it comes to telling the story of Donald Rumsfeld's life, facts have often seemed stranger than fiction. And now readers will be given the choice between the two, when a novel depicting the abduction of the former US defence secretary is published next month – on the same day as his own political memoir.
Rumsfeld's book Known and Unknown is out in America on 8 February, and is said by publisher Penguin to "pull no punches" in its inside look at the Bush administration, 9/11 and the Iraq war.
Its title refers to the infamous comment, criticised by many as gobbledegook, the defence secretary made at a 2002 Nato press conference concerning the absence of evidence that Iraq was supplying terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know," Rumsfeld stuttered. He went on to win a Foot in Mouth awardfrom the Plain English campaign for the most nonsensical remark made by a public figure.
The 78-year-old's memoir will offer "previously undisclosed details" about the Bush years, says Penguin, and his "often surprising" observations on his experiences through many decades of high-profile political life. The veteran politician was defence secretary under Gerald Ford in the mid-1970s, before being reappointed to the role under George Bush in 2001, and holds records as the youngest and the oldest person to take the post.
Known and Unknown is said to include anecdotes about many of the most prominent figures of recent history, including every US president from Dwight Eisenhower to Bush, plus Margaret Thatcher, Elvis Presley and Saddam Hussein.
But experimental US publisher McSweeney's, founded by novelist Dave Eggers, is responding to news of Rumsfeld's memoir by bringing out a darkly satirical novel, Donald, on the same date. The book, by Stephen Elliott and Eric Martin, is described on a Washington Post blog as "a breakneck thriller ... rooted in the harrowing stories of real people caught in America's disastrous military campaigns".
Donald sees Rumsfeld receive a taste of his own medicine: abducted from his Maryland home, drugged, stripped and dressed in a diaper, and thereafter held without charges in his own prison system, denied a trial and located beyond the reach of law, where no one can find him. The cover features Rumsfeld in a typically confident pose similar to that which adorns his memoir, but wearing a Guantánamo-style orange jumpsuit.
"As America's infamous former secretary of defence lies poised to unleash his wistful recollections and rewriting of the war on terror, authors Eric Martin and Stephen Elliott humbly submit their take on the historical record," says McSweeney's. The move mirrors that of OR Books in 2009, which published an essay collection, Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare on the same day that Palin's memoir Going Rogue came out, and with a similar jacket image. Rumsfeld's book comes hard on the heels of Bush's autobiography Decision Points, which has sold over 2m copies since its publication in November last year. Not all Americans have been fans, however: US activists co-ordinated a protest campaign in bookshops, reshelving Decision Points in "crime", "horror" and "fantasy", following the example of British antiwar protestors who had done the same for Tony Blair's memoir, A Journey, in the UK last autumn.
Proceeds from the sales of Known and Unknown will go to veterans' charities backed by Rumsfeld's own Rumsfeld Foundation, which "supports leadership and public service at home and the growth of free political and free economic systems abroad" through student fellowships and armed forces charities. Blair donated all proceeds from A Journey to the Royal British Legion.
