Anonymous

by Uzodinma Iweala

Welcome back to America! For a man trapped in the Homeland Security machine, passing through customs becomes a nightmarish odyssey in this story by the author of Beasts of No Nation.

He’s a well-traveled consultant arriving home at a metropolitan airport. He’s also become accustomed to extra scrutiny for his brown skin and many-stamped passport. But when he’s whisked away, isolated, and chained in a stark white room without explanation, his reality crumbles. Because what he doesn’t know is the most damning evidence against him.

Anonymous is part of Disorder, a collection of six short stories of living nightmares, chilling visions, and uncanny imagination that explore a world losing its balance in terrifying ways. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single disorienting sitting.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Horror, Audiobook, Contemporary, Thriller, Novella

21 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 27, 2019

About the author

Uzodinma Iweala is a writer and medical doctor. His first book, Beasts of No Nation: A Novel (HarperCollins, 2005), tells the story of a child soldier in West Africa. His second book, Our Kind of People: Thoughts on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, will be released in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United States in the summer of 2012. He has also published numerous short stories and essays and has worked in international development on matters of health policy.

Reviews

[Berengaria]

4 stars

short review for busy readers:
A Kafkaesque Amazon short story from the "Disorder" series. Politically important narrative calling out the inhumane and morally bankrupt practices of US Homeland Security, ICE and other similar government agencies.

in detail:
Pointing the finger at the harm the US government's tactics in its "War on Terror" and institutionalised racist paranoia do, this short story presents us with the (real or feared?) plight of an innocent man caught in a confusing and terrifying web of psychological warfare.

I've heard of the tactics detailed in this story, and they are real ones used by different American government agencies. Nothing in here is made up!

The one used on our protagonist -- a well-educated, settled African immigrant -- is listed by the UN as psychological torture and said to be able to break a mentally stable individual in about six months.

By "break," I mean mentally destroy and leave with incurable psychological damage for life.

Themes of racism, anti-immigrant fears, America's perpetual warfare mentality, and being at the whim and mercy of illogical forces makes for a terrifying and powerful cocktail. Especially for anyone who has dealt with hard-nosed, self-righteous, arrogant and ultimately pointless governmental harassment and persecution.

Honestly, that could be any of us, at any time. Even if it hasn't happened yet, or never does actually happen to us personally, it can and does happen to others.

Not a perfect story, but one with an important ethical insight for our times.

[Brooke]

2nd person.
Man detained, mistreated, then imprisoned for unknown reason by airport staff and police. Reads like it could have been I.C.E.

By the author of Beasts of No Nation. This series is successful in making me want to read more by these authors.

The 2nd person narration did not work for me in this one. He kept referring to imagining his wife’s lingerie multiple times and that didn’t fit the current experience. It came across as cold, disjointed, and broken from the narrative.

I want to check out more by this author because he is fearless and talented at addressing racial inequality.

[Paul Ataua]

A short story centering on an American man who is detained at the airport on his way home from a business trip. It’s an important piece given the growing anti-immigration feeling in the world, especially as it concerns someone who doesn’t fit the common idea of who is being detained and interrogated. How often we begin thinking the victims are someone else then realize they begin to include us. I found the subject interesting, the beginning was excellent, and the ending good, but I was unimpressed by the body of the story. I didn’t quite get the talk of perfume, his wife’s lingerie, and the prevention of procreation. What was going on there? That part didn’t work for me, but it is still an important story.

[Monica]

One of the best in the collection so far. A man is detained. His impressions are the makings of a horror story.

4 Stars

Listened to the audio book.

[Gerhard]

Curiously flat story that, combined with a few logistical niggles, turns it into the dud of the Disorder series for me thus far.

[Alya]

This is the 4th book in the collection, honestly this could easily be someone's personal experience unfortunately which is terrifying to say the least... Plot follows an American citizen describing his experience being detained in an airport .. Was very well written for a short story

[Sarah]

This one was probably the best one from the Disorder collection. Sadly, incredibly relevant - a normal everyday guy is held up at airport security and detained because of the color of his skin. The ending was scary.

Oh I forgot! The audio on this was wonderful.

[TL *Humaning the Best She Can*]

*Read for free with kindle Unlimited *

3.35 stars

Quote:

It has happened this way before, the tension, the agony, the embarrassment as the immigration officer leafs through your passport from beginning to end, flips it around, and leafs through again. You’re used to it, to keeping your head level, eyes fixed on the floor to avoid looking at this overweight man further weighed down by his tactical vest and its accessories, radio, cuffs, and a gun on a belt around his waist.

You also ignore the overweight woman and her little blond-haired boy who stand behind you, the same boy who found it extremely entertaining to repeatedly kick the back of your seat between Greenland and Nova Scotia. Now he screams and rubs his eyes red while she ignores him, tapping her foot, glaring at you because clearly this holdup is all your fault.

Well done imagery, an unsettling narrative.. the "you" perspective adding an extra factor to draw the reader in.

[Caro]

A short story from Amazon Original Stories’ DISORDER collection. It narrates the experience of a man detained by Homeland Security in the airport.

[Beth Roger aka Katiebella_Reads]

Really enjoyed it. Truly highlighted the horrors of racism after 911.

[Jenn]

This was a fast read with an engaging voice and interesting premise. Some readers didn’t like the use of second person perspective, but this didn’t bother me. In fact, if I’m being completely honest, I somehow didn’t even notice or think about the second person, which clearly indicates it wasn’t a problem but doesn’t necessarily mean it was successful. Second person is supposed to make the reader identify with the main character, almost as if the reader is the character. I didn’t really feel that connection.

The story was well-written overall, but it needed to be fleshed out more. There were a lot of questions left unanswered, and the events of the plot were vague. More details and explanations would have given this a higher rating for me.

[Nandakishore Mridula]

Brilliant tale of a man whisked away from a humdrum, middle-class life into a jail cell in an undisclosed location. He is kept chained, questioned and tortured regularly, without revealing the nature of the charges against him. His only possible crime is his skin colour.

The author writes the tale in second person, and in the present tense, putting the reader real-time into the horrific life of an innocent caught in the paranoid state machinery. Brilliant!

[Chrissie]

Wonderfully written, disturbing story of an ordinary man taken into his worst nightmare.

Part four in the Disorder series.

[Britt]

This story and ones like it should be required reading in schools (well, maybe watered down) so that young folks can understand the impact that racial profiling has. People of color, including myself, usually never fully feel quite safe, or that they are deserving of a peaceful life, because of the systematic oppression that even though isn’t blatant, is often underlying in everyday life. I think this author did a great job of showing what the absolute worst of racial profiling can look like, while also bringing up how it affect generational families.

[Linda]

Intense, profoundly disturbing, and unbelievably sad. This has happened and continues to happen. It’s terrifying to imagine if you or someone you loved were in this man’s shoes. Where does the USA or the world rate on the humanity scale? If we look different, our skin is a different color does it matter? You bet it does! 4 in the Disorder Series. I have one book left in this series, this is my favorite.

[Mandy]

Beautifully written, the writing just flows though a harrowing story and I will be looking out for more by this author.

[Alan (The Lone Librarian) Teder]

Rendition Nightmare
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook edition (July 2019)

Effectively told story about an innocent who is pulled aside at Customs for apparent further interrogation. His worst-case fantasies spiral out of control although meanwhile we also hear about his family's backstory which sounds like a completely legal immigration tale.

Anonymous is 1 of 6 short stories/novellas in the Amazon Original Disorder Series. "Stories that get inside your head. From small-town witch hunts to mass incarceration to exploitations of the flesh, this chilling collection of twisted short stories imagines the horrors of a modern world not unlike our own."

[Dee Cherry]

First read by this author- his storytelling kept me reading as this sad and disturbing story was told. Although heartfelt, it also caused anger as I read the cruel treatment encountered. This Disorders Collection is truly an eye opener

[S.A Reidman]

"You are suddenly aware that you’re afraid. And once you realize you’re afraid, you’re terrified. If there’s reason to be afraid, then anything is possible" - My goodness, this series is all sorts of real world bleak.

First, there have been maybe 2 or 3 second-person pronoun narratives that worked for me. One of them was Ogres an Adrian Tchaikovsky novella. I loved it. This narrative is so hard to get right and often sounds 👉🏽 accusatory but also really shoves you in the world of the character. Sometimes, actually most of the time, I prefer to be the omniscient observer through the omnipresent narration.

This one wasn't a dud, in fact, it was unexpectedly tender and sad and well written. And it is real everyone knows there's a someone who's become a no one because of a name or surname or tone to dark or whatever and they're lost.

Bleak I tell you.
And this is only my second installment.

[Larry Bassett]

I simply did not manage to find myself in the position of the main character. The writing did not lead me as a white heterosexual male to put myself in the place of someone not in a superior position. The words did not help me to insert myself into an oppressed situation.

[Karly]

My rating 3⭐️⭐️⭐️ another loud and clear message!!

This is book 4 in the short story Disorder Collection.

[Ginger]

All the ways we have reduced people to objects through history.
This is a recent example.

[Michelle Only Wants to Read]

A man describes his experience with Homeland Security in a horrifying and disturbing short story.

[Kelli Santistevan]

* This is the fourth story from the Amazon Disorder Collection. *

I listened to this book and I thought the narrator did a good job narrating. I liked what the synopsis said. It sounded like it would be an interesting story but I ended up not liking it very much.

[Alice4170 🌙]

4/5 ⭐️

[Soumya Prasad]

This is the third story that I read from the Disorder collection and this is one that impressed me the least.

A well-travelled American consultant comes back home but is held at Homeland security at a Metropolitan airport. Why? Because he's not white.

He's taken away from the location, isolated and chained and tortured without any explanation. His name, his passport, his designation doesn't matter. He's nothing here. Anonymous.

The story describes his ordeal and shows us the stark truth about the impact of race on people who hold power. The nightmarish situation is dark and troublesome. What is more troublesome is the fact that while we're reading this short story, someone might actually be going through this in some part of the world!

The narration is crisp and the story flows well. I listened to this one on @audible_in and the narrator was fabulous. The accent brought out the pain, the injustice, the unfairness of life. All thanks to non-fair skin.

While the story gives you a lot to think about, it is nothing new. We've heard enough about people of a certain religion or race being held at immigration and customs, we have also heard about the horror stories that come with it. While, this was an eye-opener in many ways, it still has been heard before.

[Bandit]

Yet another Kindle Single from the terrific Disorder collection. And yet another one dealing with race. I’m not familiar with the author, but the talent is obvious. This is one of those stories where a perfectly normal person goes through a perfectly normal scenario and then things go terribly wrong. Substitute that for specifics and you get a business consultant and a family man on his way back to his wife who gets taken away by the security at the airport and locked up for no reason other than his dark skin and well stamped passport. It’s a sort of living nightmare situation. And it’s a very effective story. Terrifying to think how quickly a person can become anonymous or more like how quickly a person can be made anonymous by the powers that be. Once again, narrated to perfection, authentic accent and all. Compelling disturbing interesting listen. Recommended.

[Blair]

By far the weakest story of the collection. The title struck me as ironic, since the story's featurelessness strips it of any potential emotional weight. A lot of the positive reviews seem to refer to the audio version, so maybe it's better listened to than read.

Read as part of the Amazon Original Stories Disorder collection.

TinyLetter

[Lili]

A chilling short story that depicts events that, sadly, could be all too real.

[Penny Ramirez]

Terrifying

An all-too-believable story of a man - an American citizen - held because he fits a profile, not knowing what he is purported to be involved in.