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Ali Dubyiah and the Forty Thieves NewSouth Books Told from a vantage point of long ago and far away, Ali Dubyiah and the Forty Thieves reconstructs—from the recently discovered journals of Ibrahim Barzouni—the tale of the ruler George W. “Dubyiah” Fratbush, son of the earlier monarch Wimpbush, and the Fall of the American Empire. After Ali Dubyiah ascends to the kingship, his lust for power draws him into a gambit to take possession of the world, together with his band of thieves—including Dick Chaingang, Donald Rumsfailed, and Paul Werewolf. Donning his warrior’s garb, Dubyiah battles the evil Saddam Gomorrah and Osama bin Hiden, but how long can Ali Dubyiah lie, cheat, and steal before his subjects rise up against him? Ali Dubyiah and the Forty Thieves is an ancient morality play with starkly contemporary overtones. It is as old as the human comedy and as modern as television news reality programming. It has great historic validity. It is a satire, a cautionary tale, and a fable in the genre of political-science fiction.
Reviews “The ugly side of America is the target of Ali Dubyiah and the Forty Thieves, Egerton’s debut work of fiction. At first glance, its premise seems even more at odds with his image than his fondness for Jim ’n Nick’s barbecue. This careful historian has produced a futuristic satirical fantasy aimed squarely at the present state of American politics. The book, told as a fable, begins in ‘the night-darkened end of the third millennium’ when a mysterious figure named Ibrahim Barzouni recounts the story of an ancient American king, Fratbush, who came to power unexpectedly, and by questionable means. His cronies include Dick ‘The Mole’ Chaingang, Donald ‘Dr. Toughlove’ Rumsfailed and Karl ‘Babyface’ Machiavrovelli. As Ibrahim Barzouni tells the story, Fratbush (a.k.a. Ali Dubyiah) embarks on a power-mad quest for global domination, driven by a combination of unfettered ego and primitive religious ideology. He begins his stomp across the globe in pursuit of (who else?) former ally Osama bin Hiden, now an avowed enemy of America and leader of a ‘soulless band of homicidal fanatics.’ When that quest fails, Fratbush turns his attention to attacking another repulsive ex-friend, Saddam Gomorrah, which doesn’t go so well, either. Meanwhile, on the home front, Fratbush does away with dangerous, outmoded notions like privacy and freedom of speech, while instituting new commonsense ideas about torture. The establishment of a more God-pleasing social order, including the eradication of such evils as sexual freedom and religious tolerance, is helped along by rabid fundamentalist clerics, Mullah Jerry and Mullah Pat. Natural disasters (a hurricane, for instance) give Fratbush’s minions the opportunity to display their ‘casual ineptitude’ and their contempt for the welfare of the people. Much of the narrative is devoted to character analysis of Fratbush—his boisterous BMOC charm, his self-regarding piety, his intellectual mediocrity and, above all, his unshakable refusal to admit responsibility for anything that gives off the faintest whiff of failure. One passage sure to inflame the Bush faithful (and possibly others) sketches the similarities between the unlikely American king and the ‘stealthy murderer’ bin Hiden: ‘Both were spoiled rich boys born to privilege in the middle of the twentieth century; both were contemptuous of their elders (and wasters of their wealth); both were sheltered as young men, receiving their formal education in elite institutions and traveling only within a narrow cultural orbit; both, predictably, became adults who manipulated truth to suit their own desires, without guilt or apology; and both came to power as dogmatic religious radicals certain that Allah, or God, had chosen them to lead the faithful against the infidels. In disposition and temperament, they were enough alike to be cousins, if not brothers (except that Osama seemed totally devoid of a sense of humor).’ As you might expect, this fable does not have a happy ending; Egerton is not exaggerating when he says, ‘This is a dark book.’ The discredited Fratbush eventually retires to obscurity on his ranch, and we’re treated to a Molly Bloom-esque interior monologue as he wonders how God could have let him down so badly. But nothing can save the crippled American empire. Fratbush’s reign is the tipping point when the nation’s arrogance and weakness finally overwhelm its promise. America loses all credibility and clout. Worse yet, she takes the world down with her. Her death throes precipitate an undefined global collapse. The era in which Barzouni writes is a cultural and technological dark age. Egerton took his inspiration from The Last American, a little-known fantasy novel by John Ames Mitchell, which was published in 1889 and which Egerton stumbled across in 1990 while browsing The Haunted Bookshop in Mobile, Ala. . . .”
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