Abe’s Review

An American expat's musings on life with other American expats, August 26, 2007

The author has spent a good chunk of his life in Saudi Arabia, but there is nothing here to suggest he has any particular insights (good or bad) to impart, and it's not even clear from the book whether he established a serious friendship with a single Saudi, or had a single meaningful conversation with a Saudi. There is in fact more about the author's personal demons in the Vietnam war, which he fails to weave into the story to make awkward and unoriginal points about America and the Middle East. There are also weird digressions about country music and non-sequitur quotations of dated American pop songs that fail to resonate and do not advance the story being told. The one interesting part of the book is in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, when the author is duped into playing an American role in what sounds like an anti-American Saudi televsion mini-series about the misfortunes that the 11 September attacks heaped upon the Saudi people.

Mostly, this is just a random collection of tales from a disconnected expat living in the expat bubble and observing Saudi customs from afar: look at how the women dress! look at the religious police harassing people! Nor does the book succeed in its stated task of conveying a sense of the rapid social changes that the Kingdom saw over recent decades. For a brilliant, if fictionalized, account of this, see the "Cities of Salt" trilogy, especially the first volume, by Abdelrahman Munif.

I used to take offense at the fact that comedian Dave Barry could visit a foreign country for a half week, and immediately turn around write a bestseller that would easily outsell any books written by scholars or journalists who had painstakingly built up a lifetime full of expertise on that country. It is far worse, however, that this man could live in Saudi Arabia for some 20 years and write such a horrible book, that offers less insight than Dave Barry might offer after a four day visit to the Kingdom. I've read perhaps two hundred books on the Arab world and this just may be the least worth reading of the lot.