Down the drain

KAEC (pronounced cake) stands for King Abdullah Economic City, a high-tech artificial city in Saudi Arabia, will live and work in the future, one and a half million. That at least is the king's vision. Currently however, it is no more than a few standard building and a lot of sand.

Alan Clay is a consultant who prepared a presentation for King Abdullah with a small team of IT experts the firm Reliant to secure the company awarded the contract for the IT development of the city. Reliant has invented a kind of video conference, in which the interlocutors will not appear on the screen, but as a hologram in the room. This ghost effect hours the king to be impressed.

Alan Clay is plagued by all sorts of worries. He used to be manager at the renowned bicycle manufacturer Schwinn until it outsourced the entire production to China and subsequently disappeared from the scene, because the Chinese, rather sold the bicycles that they produced then himself. Trying to launch its own high-end bike manufacturer, went wrong and left a pile of debt. His consultant business has now been reduced to a one-man company that still makes sales barely. And that he can fund another year in college his daughter, depends solely on whether he can collect the commission on this deal now.

With this constellation, the novel is unfortunately very shaky ground: that a global telecommunications leader such a washed-business consultants, the information technology but also has no idea entrusted such a million dollar business just because it because the study acquaintance with a nephew of the king perhaps can open a few doors down, is hard to imagine. And so it is actually only logical that goes wrong, what can go wrong: The presentation will be held in a tent, which the technical prerequisites are missing, the local representative is not tangible, and the king also does not come. Not today, not tomorrow, and what it looks like, in the foreseeable future is not.

And you also do not get the impression that Alan Clay wants to make in any way the six-figure commission, which he should get in case of success. Telephone and other communications media, he does not seem to want to use. The timid attempts to advance the project to fail again and again to the indifferent receptionist of the neighboring business center, and so we get plenty of opportunity to Alan Clay to observe how he kills the time. Again, it is good for a few surprises, especially because he, for all his physical and mental deficits two desirable women find that expire him spontaneously and then enter into the highest risk to get him into bed. After all, we are in Saudi Arabia, a country that has freedom of movement between the sexes is under very unpleasant penalties. But if we had not been with his professional failure enough compassion, we can get it now with his sexual do. The whole humanity Jammer holds an then on again.

While "Zeitoun" was a stirring indictment of American society policy, is the "hologram" simply absurd. Who is so far removed from reality and passively as Alan Clay or the company that has commissioned him, does not need to be surprised if he does not come into play business. (What perhaps would be in this case, even a blessing, because the future of KAEC is how many a megalomaniac project in the Arabian Peninsula, in a rather soft sand built.) So I have the "hologram" not as the great plea against the fatal consequences of globalization and felt for a sustainable economy and decent working conditions, which I expected after the euphoric press announcements.

The extra star's the way for Yousef, Alan's driver and occasional sidekick, the mind moves in a refreshing way, the visions of the King and Alan's belief in the right perspective, and for the jokes that Alan told him go. They were really good.