Volume 39, Number 6 · March 26, 1992
Desert Ruritania
By David Gilmour
Cities of Salt
by Abdelrahman Munif, translated by Peter Theroux
Vintage, 627 pp., $12.95 (paper)
The Trench
by Abdelrahman Munif, translated by Peter Theroux
Pantheon, 554 pp., $25.00
Few subjects lend themselves so naturally to enraged satire as the development of the Gulf states. The emergence of these desert Ruritanias has been so fast and so preposterous that the weapons of Horace and Pope seem inadequate to deal with it. Mild and witty mockery of the follies of the oil age is too gentle a treatment for a subject which would have provoked the fury of Juvenal and the excoriations of Swift.
Review, 2988 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |