Although I think this may be one effect of these books, it could be argued that their very qualities of rawness and at times crude propagandism actually distract from their endeavor to create fully convincing fictive simulations from which relevant lessons can be drawn for our "real world." This distraction has to do with the matter of mimesis, the way the books make their truth claims, how they manage their reality effects. Exploring this issue also requires that we consider questions of genre because it, too, conditions how we receive and interpret literary texts.

DEFINE: Explains how mimesis and reality effects connect to genre expectations, tying rhetorical technique to interpretive outcome.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 213