Florence of Arabia
- Book Review,
by Christopher Buckley
From Publishers Weekly
One has to admire the pluck of an author who dares satirize what may be the touchiest subject in the country today: Arab American relations. Buckley (No Way to Treat a First Lady, etc.) jumps into the sandstorm feet first with this tale of scrappy Florence Farfaletti, Deputy to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs. When a friend of Florence's who is married to Prince Bawad of Wasabia is executed, Florence proposes a plan to free the women of the Middle East. Covertly accepted by the U. S. Government, the plan involves creating a TV station in Wasabia's neighboring country, Matar, which instigates a revolution with broadcasts that, among other things, encourage women to throw off their burkas. Humor and action are in great supply, and reader Kalember (whom 40-somethings may remember as Susannah Hart from the series Thirtysomething) handles both with aplomb. The serene stability of her voice is a good foil for the story's calamitous happenings but, at the same time, her voice conveys a certain vulnerability and righteousness that makes her portrayal of Florence completely believable. As an added bonus, Kalember's delivery of the English-as-a-second-language Arab characters is both sympathetic and hilarious. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
In these parlous times it takes more than courage to do what Christopher Buckley sets out to do in his new farce; it takes a devil-may-care spirit somewhere between serenity and madness. Florence of Arabia is very funny in places, and even devastating in the aggregate. To call Buckley irreverent doesn't do justice to reverence. What is more, this delightfully improbable tale is propelled by a noble purpose -- gender justice in an oppressive theocracy -- that could (Buckley can hope) inoculate him from attack and reprimand. But for me, what dominates this story is its elaborate mockery of the culture and faith of tens of millions of people, people who have reason to be sensitive these days about such irreverence as well as a troublesome record of reacting to it. Muslims, I mean, in a big wedge of the Arab world. So a non-Muslim's laughter at many of the fine riffs and caricatures in Florence of Arabia is necessarily awkward laughter. Yucks as un-PC as these have not been heard in many a year, and certainly not for the last three, anywhere outside the mouth-foaming sectors of public discourse. Florence of Arabia -- and what a wonderful title! -- concerns the Royal Kingdom of Wasabia, a vast and oil-rich desert land ruled by a vast and oil-rich royal family. Its oppressive power is guaranteed by optimum connections to the American establishment greased by a suave prince as its longtime ambassador in Washington. Wasabia's medieval legal system, among other things, subjugates, humiliates and violates women, as well as executing them for such vices as flirting. Of course this is a wholly fictional land, too absurd to resemble any in the real family of nations. A historian whom Buckley concocts describes Wasabia as the Middle East's preeminent "no-fun zone," unless "one's idea of fun includes beheading, amputation, flogging, blinding and having your tongue cut off for offenses that in other religions would earn you a lecture from the rabbi, five Hail Marys from a priest and, for Episcopalians, a plastic pink flamingo on your front lawn."The neighboring emirate of Matar -- pronounced Mutter -- is an equally imaginary gulfside state ruled by, let us say, more relaxed standards of piety, including a mullah-sanctioned gambling and entertainment enclave called Infidel Land. The current emir's "handling of Matar's religious authorities had been, by unanimous consent, masterful. Matari mullahs . . . were so prosperous that they had acquired the local nickname of 'moolahs.' They received a generous salary from the state, luxury apartments, a new Mercedes-Benz every three years and an annual six-week paid sabbatical, which most of them chose to take in the South of France, one of Islam's holiest sites." Florence Farfaletti, the scrappy, wisecracking leading gal of this tale, is a restless Foreign Service officer and angry ex-wife of a Wasabi. Beholding the umpteenth instance of violence being done to womenfolk there, Florence gets a cockamamie idea. She cooks up an ingenious plan to orchestrate the soft overthrow of the system -- the veil, the stoning, the works -- and liberate the women of Wasabia and beyond. The State Department reels in horror, but, much to her surprise, an angel named Uncle Sam appears in her life, totally witting of her plan, and agrees to bankroll the idea. CIA? White House? Who knows? Who cares? He's got money and authority -- helicopters, even. Florence of Arabia recruits a buffed-for-Hollywood team: "A hit man from Dogpatch, a PR hack, and a queer Foreign Service Officer," as the latter person cracks. They set up their field headquarters in Matar to carry out the ludicrous op, which mustn't be spoiled here. As it unfolds, its success is serially threatened by tense relations between Matar and Wasabia and the rivalrous meddling of the United States and France. Beyond the kingdom and emirate, Buckley leaves the Arab world alone and keeps a 10-foot-pole's length away from Israel. Otherwise he spreads the satire around with a generous pitchfork -- State Department stuffpots, K Street sleazebuckets, Capitol Hill blowhards, CIA crazies and -- what would we do without them? -- the French. "Did not France have her own proud history of screwing things up? Look at Algeria, Vietnam, Syria, Haiti -- Quebec -- all still reeling from their days of French rule. Clearly, France was ready and eager to show the world that she, too, could wreak disastrous, unforeseen consequences abroad, far more efficiently and almost certainly with more flair than America." As we saw in his earlier novels (Thank You for Smoking and No Way to Treat a First Lady among them), Buckley savors Washington for its straight-faced ridiculousness: "Senators pounded their podia, demanding answers. The president declared that he, too, wanted answers. The CIA said that although it had no official comment, it, too, perhaps even more than the president and the senators, wanted answers. The secretary of state said that there might in fact be no answers, but if there were, he certainly would be interested in hearing them. The secretary general of the United Nations said that he was reasonably certain answers existed, but first the right questions must be asked, and then they would have to be translated, and this would take time." Buckley keeps us entertained with clever japes and juicy bits, rashers of Thousand-and-One-Nights sexual innuendo, awe-inspiring passages of potted history. I like the titles of two imaginary books he mentions: volume XXI of Henry Kissinger's memoirs, "Years of Genius," and a philandering Arab prince's pensees, "The Seven Pillows of Wisdom." Such wit works well in Buckley's quick-off-the-mark short pieces in the New Yorker. Extending the riff makes other demands, as invention has to give way to sustaining narrative. We can't help rooting for Florence and her Arab sisters as they take on the hapless sheiks and whoring princes and cold-blooded mukfellah enforcers, and it becomes clear that Buckley has fallen for Florence and her cause as well. The ridicule gives way to sweetness on the one hand and indignation on the other, sentiments you wouldn't expect from the seasoned cynic at the controls. Here's Buckley tut-tutting the harsh justice dealt to two women who walked uncovered and unchaperoned in the streets of Wasabia: "It was quite obvious, declared the mukfellah official who announced their sentences, that they had been on their way to fornicate with loathsome blackamoor cooks. There was no actual evidence of this, but the advantage of a religious judiciary is that you don't need evidence."Christopher Buckley is likely to make some people very angry with this book, but there will be no denying the elegance and, by my lights, the essential gentleness of his wit. Buckley can be offensive -- sometimes uproariously so -- but I don't detect malice, or at least not much. Whether everyone else will read him this way is another question. Reviewed by Charles Trueheart Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
From AudioFile
The title mirrors the tale--a pun-filled, double-entendre-laden, politically incorrect farce with a feminist tilt. At the heart of this epic of the present-day Middle East is a brave U.S. diplomat launched by a passel of profiteers on a mission that ignites a clash of cultures in a media-saturated world. All this takes place against the backdrop of Buckley's delicious reconstruction of historical and current realities. The author's penchant for gleeful wordplay (try the phrase "half-vast" for kicks) amidst constant, and not-so-gentle, pinpricks at fanaticism of all stripes and the poobahs who preserve it are tripwires of delight, enveloped in myriad truths. All is recounted with tongue placed resolutely in cheek. Patricia Kalember modulates her voice and accent elegantly, often with bite and subtle yet lucid pacing that rarely allows any of the author's ironic touches to pass unappreciated. M.J.B. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From the Inside Flap
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.
About the Author
CHRISTOPER BUCKLEY is the author of ten books and the founding editor of Forbes FYI magazine, but is proudest of the fact that he recently had a ten-and-a-half-hour lunch with Christopher (no relation) Hitchens. He (Buckley, not Hitchens) was managing editor of Esquire at age 24, and worked as a merchant marine and a White House speechwriter. He was awarded the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, but lost it during the lunch with Hitchens. Florence of Arabia is his first and probably last Middle East comedy.
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