The Foreign Service Journal, November 2006

and fellow tribesmen, lost sight of his objectives to fight corruption and help the poor. No More Boss Man follows this turbulent era in African history with a fictional, behind-the-scenes look at the key players in the coup. Frank Catanoso, public affairs officer in Monrovia at the time and the first American to have an audience with Sergeant Samuel K. Doe, provides a vivid account of a military takeover of a corrupt Third World government and a critical examination of U.S. foreign policy in Africa. Frank Catanoso was an FSO with the U.S. Information Agency. He served in Addis Ababa, Monrovia, Calcutta, Milan and Trinidad & Tobago. Soul of a Harpist: Dreamed by Karim Chaibi Karim Chaibi, Petrus, 2005, £7.00, hardcover, 190 pages. Soul of a Harpist is a book of short stories and original paintings told in the Tunisian storytelling tradition. Written from the perspective of an Arab-American, these imagi- native tales discuss topics related to intercultural understanding, identity, philosophy and surrealism, while incorporating North African cultural refer- ences, from pre-Islamic gods to Islamic traditions to images from Christianity. Karim Chaibi’s seamless shifts among Arabic, French and English make this book “at once surreal and charmed, peopled by talk- ing shadows, melting bodies and drunken sculptors.” A storyteller and painter, Karim Chaibi was born in Tunis. He is currently in Washington with his wife, FSO Lora Berg, where they are working together on a project of Arab-Jewish understanding for the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. The couple and their three children have also lived and worked in Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Slovakia. To order the book, go to www.arabsurreal.com. China Gate: An International Thriller Fritz Galt, Pagefree Publishing, 2005, $13.95, paperback, 380 pages. This new novel by acclaimed thriller writer Fritz Galt is “a tale of modern-day pirates, political black- mail, vast sums of money at stake, and terrorists on the loose.” Protagonist Raymond O. Flowers gets involved in a political scandal in Washington and, as a result, loses his family, his job and his freedom. His fight for justice becomes a story at once engrossing, exotic and full of suspense. The novel shows both Galt’s extensive knowl- edge of life abroad and world affairs and his understanding of real-life threats to national security. In the words of the Westfield Leader : “Fritz Galt’s spy thrillers boom!” Novelist Fritz Galt is a Foreign Service spouse who has lived in Cuba, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Taiwan, India and China. He has published essays on travel and expatriate and diplomatic life in numer- ous publications, and is co-founder of The SUN: The Spouses’ Underground Newsletter and Talesmag. com: Tales from a Small Planet . For an in-depth look at his work, visit his personal Web site at www.sigma- books.com . The Banquet Bug: A Novel Geling Yan, Hyperion East, 2006, $24.95, hardcover, 288 pages. Geling Yan’s novel chroni- cles the adventures of Dan Dong, an unemployed factory worker who poses as a journal- ist to eat gourmet meals for free at state-sponsored ban- quets. At first, Dan enjoys exquisite meals at the drop of a fake business card, but when he becomes privy to a scandal and is arrested during a crackdown on “banquet bugs,” the story shifts into a twisted, intrigue-laden plot. Will Dan be able to uncover the corruption without revealing his true identity? Publishers’ Weekly called Yan’s “multifaceted mistak- en-identity farce” a clever and “pointed critique of capitalism’s rise in her native China.” A Foreign Service spouse, Geling Yan was born in Shanghai and began writing in the late 1970s as a jour- nalist. Her first novel was published in China in 1985. Following the Tiananmen Square massacre, she left China for the United States. Since then she has written many short stories, including one for the award-winning Xiu Ciu: The Sent-Down Girl . This is her first work in English. She lives in San Francisco and Africa. N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 75