Christopher Buckley has by now long grown past the shadow of father William F. Buckley, Jr. His satires are consistently funny and topical; I’ve read and enjoyed Thank You For Smoking, God Is My Broker: A Monk-Tycoon Reveals the 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth, and No Way to Treat a First Lady and plan to get the remaining two, The White House Mess and Little Green Men, soon since MVPL has both.
Published in 2004, Florence of Arabia plays off our current (though pre-Iraq invasion) misadventures in the Middle East. I started reading it just before heading to Seattle last week and finished it my first morning there–I couldn’t bear to put the book down at the end and was almost late for the first sessions. Buckley creates real characters and compelling conflicts, mixed with humor that arises out of their combinations and, of course, an educated sense of reality; he did go to Yale after all.
Florence Farfaletti is a career State Department functionary, specializing in Gulf State relations after having married and divorced a minor prince of Wasabia (a barely fictionalized version of Saudi Arabia). The action kicks off when she gets a late night call from the youngest wife of the Wasabian ambassador, paniced after having an auto accident at the gates of CIA headquarters, and Farfaletti’s attempt to save the princess fails spectacularly.
Out of her anguish she writes an outrageous plan to use TV to stabilize the region by liberating women from the Koran-inspired yoke. Immediately vetoed by the ‘wiser heads’ at State, Florence is approached with funding and other resources by a mysterious man assumed to be from the CIA or a similar unit. Taking a geek from her department at State, a PR star (trained by none other than Nick Naylor of Thank You for Smoking and No Way to Treat a First Lady) and an ex-CIA/Special Ops hunk, she convinces the Sheik and Sheika of neighboring Mattar (an exact match for Qatar) to approve TVMatar.
And away we go! After shocking everyone with an Oprah-like talk show the gang blow everone’s minds with a newscast that broadcasts footage of the traditional Islamic punishments meted out to misbehaving women. Remember that the House of Saud’s power is heavily based on the ultra-strict Wahabi sect (Wahabi, Wasabi, get it?) and that Buckley takes little liberty with reality. To use the language of Farfaletti’s grandfather–who proudly served under Mussolini back in the day–mamma mia!
hilariously recommended
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