Florence of Arabia

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.

Christopher Buckley's comic thriller takes readers to the Arab land of Matar, where a philandering emir allays his restless wife by allowing her to start a TV network for Arab women. She is joined in this endeavor by a maverick American State Department officer known as Florence, who wants to use the TV network to start a revolution among Islamic women. But before the revolution can occur, Florence must deal with the shady dealings of the royal family of neighboring Wasabia; the CIA; and a very dangerous camel. With darkly comic insight into the politics of the Middle East, Christopher Buckley takes readers on and adventurous, wickedly funny journey into Arabia.

The Washington Post - Charles Tureheart

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.

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.