Phillip Bannowsky

Jacobo the Turko Phillip Bannowsky

Tragicomic and transgressive, Jacobo the Turko recounts the misadventures of Jacobo Bitar, an Ecuadorian of Indigenous and Lebanese parentage, who seeks the American Dream on the beaches of Delaware, only to be robbed of his pay and passport, harried by I. C. E., and deported to Lebanon (where he has never been and) just in time for the 2006 Hezbollah/Israel war. From there, he is abducted to the Bagram Theater Internment Facility and ultimately confined at Guantánamo Prison. Other characters-a 7th-century Byzantine boy-king, three Inka rulers, a Jewish folk-art-collecting refugee, a US commando, an African American artist of Wilmington, his teenage ward, a Gujarati shop keeper, his Chinese shift supervisor, a Palestinian exile, a Lebanese launderer, a youthful Taliban, a Gitmo guard, a prison imam, and Jacobo's parents-are similarly swept in the roiled currents of our time, seeking fortune, fleeing peril, or taken in bondage. Jacobo the Turko explores the braided rivers of class, culture, nationality, and identity and addresses the fundamental issues of human rights in our time.