Land of Sweetheart Deals

Land of Sweetheart Deals is a tragic cautionary tale that explores a government's manipulation of print and social media as well as the sexual exploitation and trafficking of juveniles in Yemen. The narrator of this novel presents himself as the reader's expert guide to Yemen's slipperiest slopes, physical and moral, and then plummets down them headfirst. This amiable narrator and protagonist, Mutahhar Fadl, is assigned by the editor of a pro-government newspaper to leave his normal beat in Sana'a and travel to Hodeida to report on the rape of a child. He soon realizes that his true mission is not to cover a trial but to cover-up the crime, because the accused rapist is a government loyalist. Mutahhar's marriage, career, and integrity are tested when the seductive perks of his assignment tempt him to become the novel's antihero. While he tumbles down a dark rabbit hole with many twists and turns, one wonders whether Mutahhar's government handlers know him better than he knows himself.

The novel's Arabic title Ard al-Mu'amarat al-Sa'ida is a satirical play on the Roman designation of Southern Arabia as "Arabia Felix," fertile or happy Arabia. The novel's chapters, which are numbered in reverse order, appear in chronological order, day by day.