New Novel, A Sequel:

A Sufi's Ghost

Carmen commits a capital crime. She disobeys her husband. Worse yet, she leaves her husband's house alone. Worse yet, she took one of his many Mercedes to meet a man. She's been in a disastrous marriage since the wedding day, almost five years ago. Stuck in Saudi Arabia, she is on the run to get out. Born in Persia, raised in Paris, she thirsts for freedom ever since her mother arranged the marriage to a Saudi prince. Bright, well-educated, elegant, she wants more than a cloistered life in the desert.

Larry Larson left the CIA only a couple months ago, so disenchanted about how his service as a case officer ruined his private life. His wife left him. Now he returns to Saudi Arabia to hunt down al-Qaeda lieutenants for the reward money. Big money can help ease the pain and fix his messed up life, and help him to regain his losses. When his main source of information, Prince Nabir, is assassinated, he's desperate and needs a break. He meets Carmen, who takes him on a wild ride through the desert, following the ghost of a prominent Sufi. A Sufi's Ghost

Reviews

‘Liberty and Justice for Oil’, as viewed by a burned-out CIA bounty hunter and a beautiful Persian Princess running for their lives in Saudi Arabia

By Ron Kenner, Editor, RKedit, www.rkedit.com

A Sufi’s Ghost is a fast-paced, action-oriented novel that’s hard to put down: a remarkable, readable mix of East-West characters: a tough former U.S. soldier and burned-out CIA action hero on the run with a beautiful Persian Princess.They’re on the run for their lives but he’s also searching, for something, and she’s also on the run from her stultifying life of isolation and privilege—well… limited privilege, male-chauvinist Saudi style.

At first it sounds like something of a fairy tale; or like Hollywood, without the dark side. For those old enough, the mysterious coming together of these two characters may even suggest the likes of the charming age-of-movie-innocence Audrey Hepburn-Gregory Peck 1953 movie, “A Roman Holiday” —except that A Sufi’s Ghost includes a long spate of blood and death; and, not least, the novel digs into real world politics and religion with a depiction well beyond our mild west with its timid mainstream media or cautious citizenry growing up and being taught not to discuss politics or religion.

No fairytale, this is an insight-packed book; it keeps building not only on Biskeborn’s particular fictional story with its own gripping tensions, but on little known real-world oil and Mid East history that impacts deeply on all of our lives; and even —considering the ludicrous non-existent energy and environmental policies of the recent GWB administration —a history that very likely has played a role in global warming.

For example, most everyone knows of the U.S.’s expansionist 1823 Monroe Doctrine or the anticommunist 1947 Truman Doctrine “to defend the Americas.” But how many know about the 1957 Eisenhower doctrine, which served to defend the much despised oily royalty in Saudi Arabia; and how many friends do you think that made for us in the Middle East?

I should add that I know Mark Biskeborn, both from his other quality writings; I should also note that I’d have little interest to praise A Sufi Ghost if I didn’t think the book was on target.

Set in Saudi Arabia, A Sufi’s Ghost is an extremely well-researched novel about a part of the planet seemingly remote and unrelated to our everyday world. Saudi Arabia undoubtedly remains barely present in our day-to-day consciousness; at least until we consider that this area served as the home base for almost all of the loony terrorists who masterminded and carried out the devastating 9/11 attack in the U.S.

A quick read of A Sufi’s Ghost may remind us that 9/11 was an attack in which too much ignorance, media myopia and timidity—when it comes to honoring the courage of our convictions—enabled the GWB administration to slap an intelligence agency on top of an intelligence agency and con our nation into invading Iraq. Now, very possibly that same lack of awareness, lacking the kind of subtle insight found in A Sufi’s Ghost—or the likes of Robert Dreyfuss’ “don’t miss” Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam—may well allow us to slide deeper into a quagmire in Afghanistan.

A Sufi’s Ghost, dramatic, revealing, entertaining, carries a strong sense of authenticity, real-world credibility and you-are-there immediacy. Reading Biskeborn, one is reminded a little of Hemingway. Hemingway deserves credit not so much for what he had to say for himself, not for his machismo, not for his heroics, not even for bare bones lean and mean writing; including some fiction prompted by, and under Hemingway’s influence, that has grown leaner and meaner and perhaps, too, increasingly meaningless over the years. (Few literary works, for example, have touched on religion with the kind of subtlety and insight found in Robert Kirsch’s God Against the Gods, another book that provides insight into Biskeborn’s novel.)

More likely, shying away from generalities and connecting us more strongly to what we can see, feel, touch, hear, or put into clear terms, Hemingway’s great contribution is the way in which his works successfully brought the literature of his time back to its physical senses.

Other works have had a similar impact. Brilliantly, T.S. Eliot, especially in his acclaimed The Waste Land, was perhaps among the first to dramatize poetry and give us poems with emphasis on real scenes and characters; even if that meant, as Eliot once put it, that “meaning is a sop while the poetry does the work.”

Taking a lead from Hemingway, Eliot, and not least, borrowing from Edgar Allen Poe, many of today’s books are so well written and carry so much punch and impact that we lose sight of the fact that all too often very little is being said. A Sufi’s Ghost is a novel with plenty of punch; but after a single good read this one stays with you, too, because it surely has a lot to say for itself.

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