Checkpoint

Two men - Jay and Ben - sit in a Washington hotel room. Well, Ben tries feebly to reason or cajole, while Jay rants and rages about everything from the horror of what happened at that southern Iraq checkpoint where US forces opened fire on a Shiite family in a Land Rover, killing most of them, and decapitating two young girls;

Born in 1957, the author of several acclaimed novels, most recently A Box of Matches, and two controversially sexy ones (Vox and The Fermata) as well as essays.,including the campaigning Double Fold for which the New York Times called him 'the Erin Brokovich of the library world'.