Book description
The bestselling author who made mincemeat of political correctness
in Thank You for Smoking, conspiracy theories in Little Green Men, and
Presidential indiscretions No Way to Treat a First Lady now takes on
the hottest topic in the entire world-Arab-American relations-in a
blistering comic novel sure to offend the few it doesn't delight.
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.
