Al-Tounsi: A Novel

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Al-Tounsi is the debut novel by the award-winning playwright, Anton Piatigorsky, and tells the story of the US Supreme Court’s handling of a landmark case involving the rights of detainees held in a US military base. Although the novel follows the case as it maneuvers through the minds and hands of the Justices—the larger-than-life Killian Quinn in the throes of a dangerous affair, the ambitious but insecure Gideon Rosen desperate to make his mark on history, the famed feminist Sarah Kolmann staring down the prospect of losing her husband to cancer--it is ultimately shepherded by one Justice in particular, Rodney Sykes, who begins the novel in emotional crisis. After his wife’s sudden death a year earlier, his relationship with Cassandra, his grown daughter, is in tatters, and he feels unable to repair it. As news of Cassandra’s affair with her boss, a prominent circuit court Judge, comes to light, Rodney confronts his own repression and demons, and gradually allows his private life to influence his legal reasoning.

Al-Tounsi explores in detail how the personal stories and life dramas, career rivalries and political sympathies of these titans blend with their philosophies to create the most important legal decisions of our time.

PRAISE FOR AL-TOUNSI

“This remarkable book marries a sophisticated understanding of the law to an even deeper grasp of human nature. The result is revelatory: insight into both current legal issues and the timeless problems of being human.”
—Kermit Roosevelt, Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School and author of Allegiance: A Novel

“Al-Tounsi is at once a remarkable novel of the law and of human relationships. The Supreme Court is the pinnacle of American jurisprudence but it’s also a very small and very intimate workplace, staffed by nine erratic geniuses; in Al-Tounsi it’s all on display, along with one searingly familiar case about wartime detainees.”
—Ben Winters, author of Underground Airlines

“A wonderful read. Piatigorsky has created a fictional Supreme Court filled with fascinating justices handling a case that easily could be real. Al-Tounsi is a powerful reminder that justices are human and that, as much as the law, determines how important cases are decided.”
—Erwin Chemerinsky, U.S. constitutional law and federal civil procedure scholar,
and current and founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law

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