Saturday, July 23, 2011

Florence of Arabia

My Rating: 4.5/5
Pages: 272 • Speed: Fast
Subject: Satirical Thriller
"...a blistering comic novel sure to offend the few it doesn’t delight" (B&N.COM).


Christopher Buckley's spot-on pun of dysfunctional world-Saudi-American relations gives the reader both a laugh and heart-aching reality check. Widely gutsy and hilariously understood, his ironic parallels of warped-Islamic culture leaves a shocking mark of intrigue regarding the women of our oil providers. For example, an executioner reduces a woman's sentence for driving a car (the most seditious of offences) from beheading in front of the plaza's Starbucks to a mere 1,000 lashes. Buckley's response? "God be praised." His sarcasm and deep comprehension of world-order seeps through every page. This Arab-jibing adventure is filled with sweaty romance, undercover CIA and a taunting taste of evil disguised as religious rule. Hold onto your hat, your burka...and quite possibly your head as Florence Farfarletti attempts to liberal Arab women through jaw-dropping television!





Here's the back-cover summary: "Appalled by the punishment of her rebellious friend Nazrah, youngest and most petulant wife of Prince Bawad of Wasabia, Florence Farfarletti decides to draw a line in the sand. As Deputy to the deputy assistant secretary for Near East Affairs, Florence invents a far-reaching, wide-ranging plan for female emancipation in that part of the world. The U.S. government, of course, tells her to forget it. Publicly, that is. Privately, she’s enlisted in a top-secret mission to impose equal rights for the sexes on the small emirate of Matar (pronounced “Mutter”), the “Switzerland of the Persian Gulf.” Her crack team: a CIA killer, a snappy PR man, and a brilliant but frustrated gay bureaucrat. Her weapon: TV shows. The lineup on TV Matar includes A Thousand and One Mornings, a daytime talk show that features self defense tips to be used against boyfriends during Ramadan; an addictive soap opera featuring strangely familiar members of the Matar royal family; and a sitcom about an inept but ruthless squad of religious police, pitched as “Friends from Hell.” The result: the first deadly car bombs in the country since 1936, a fatwa against the station’s entire staff, a struggle for control of the kingdom, and, of course, interference from the French. And that’s only the beginning. A merciless dismantling of both American ineptitude and Arabic intolerance, Florence of Arabia is Christopher Buckley’s funniest and most serious novel yet, a biting satire of how U.S. good intentions can cause the Shiite to hit the fan."


Available here.













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