Publisher's Weekly Review
Although the subject matter is dead serious, the picaresque subtitle reflects the defiant wit at the heart of this highly revealing memoir by the colorful and prominent former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. Murray's brief term (2002-2004) belies his influence as a scrupulous administrator who, whatever his personal failures (and he's refreshingly up-front about them), proved incorruptible in pursuit of social justice in a nation suffering under a sadistic regime. In addition to competence, wit and considerable daring, Murray displayed a rare integrity in Tashkent that stood out among his counterparts, which was precisely what got him into trouble with both dictator Karimov's brutal totalitarian state and with his own government, which eventually resorted to an eye-opening campaign to oust him. A deluge of bureaucratic and personal information occasionally blurs the focus in this book, but Murray uses the full weight of his ambassadorship to hold a key ally of the U.S. accountable for deep-seated economic corruption and human rights abuses-including pervasive use of torture- and runs headlong into some of the fiercest contradictions in the "war on terror." (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Britain's former ambassador to Uzbekistan unloads his prodigious rage and frustration about his country's morally compromised part in America's dirty little war on terror. If Murray were as awe-inspiring a person as he believes himself to be, it would make for quite an astounding package--if only. The good news for readers of his scabrous political memoir is that he's a good hand at telling a rollicking story, even if his sizable ego often obstructs the view. Sent to represent Her Majesty's interests in Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, Murray (who had spent a fair amount of time as a foreign-service officer in Soviet bloc countries) was quickly repulsed by the barbaric level of human-rights abuses committed by the government. The horrors included everything from suspected dissidents being scalded alive to serial rapes of female civilians by a police force run rampant. Meanwhile, the government appeared to be little more than a cabal of corrupt gangsters who kept Uzbekistan's people in a state of slave-like deprivation. No matter how many telegrams Murray sent to London informing his superiors of what was happening on the ground, he was invariably given the same answer: Uzbekistan is an important ally in the war on terror, and any abuses are caused by a natural fear of Muslim extremism. Murray is no fish-eyed scold, though. He favors good booze and women and has a gift for cockeyed humor. An uncompromising Scot clearly expert at his job, he's also given to grade-school-level sexism and supreme self-satisfaction. What sets this book apart from most score-settling tomes by former politicos is that while Murray may be a pompous, conceited windbag, that doesn't keep him from being absolutely right in his moral convictions. A rowdy piece of work that makes moral high-mindedness and a bacchanalian approach to life seem a great fit. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Must diplomacy involve duplicity? Murray, an energetic and forthright British diplomat, moved his family to Tashkent in 2002 with high hopes for fostering progress in Uzbekistan. But he soon discovered that under the dictatorial rule of Islam Karimov, thousands of political and religious prisoners were being held without trial, many tortured and murdered. Murray sent urgent communiqués to his superiors, then began speaking out. A hero to the oppressed, he was viewed as a traitor in London and Washington as both administrations courted Karimov as an ally as the war in Iraq got under way. Forced to leave his post in 2004, Murray now boldly details Karimov's crimes against humanity, his own wild and risky adventures, and the chilling and unconscionable actions of the UK and the U.S. Writing with brio, chagrin, and conviction, Murray admits that as a whiskey-loving, kilt-wearing skirt chaser, he is no paragon. But his determination to stand up for human rights makes him a man of conscience well worth listening to. And he is one helluva storyteller. An electrifying read; watch for the movie.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
A CURIOUS passage occurs in "My Father Is a Book," Janna Malamud Smith's tender, touching 2006 memoir of her father, Bernard Malamud. In the spring of 1|978, when the novelist was in his mid-60s, he and his wife, Ann, had dinner with Philip Roth and Claire Bloom in the latter couple's London apartment. In a letter to his daughter describing the visit, Malamud affectionately characterizes Claire Bloom - "absolutely unpretentious" - and then, in parentheses, adds this detail about greeting Roth: "We kissed on the lips when I came in. He couldn't have done that two years ago." Now wait a minute. Is this the Philip Roth who by then had put the id into Yid, the writer who had turned Freud's three elements of the psyche into the Flying Karamazov Brothers? And is the letter writer the Bernard Malamud known for his themes of redemption through suffering, of the burden of conscience that weighs down even the artist-hero? Is it this Bernard Malamud, the creator of the Christlike Jewish store owner, Morris Bober, and also of Arthur Fidelman, a hapless painter forced to choose between the gross imperfection of his life and the complete bollixing of his work, between Fidelman's mostly fruitless attempts to make a woman and his mostly futile efforts to make art? By presenting himself as liberated and Roth as repressed, Malamud - who died in 1986 - may well have been taking imaginative revenge on a younger rival. Roth, after all, had at one time publicly scolded Malamud for being narrowly moral and uptight. As Philip Davis recalls in his wise, scrupulous, resolutely admiring biography, "Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Life," in 1974 Roth had contributed a long reflection called "Imagining Jews" to The New York Review of Books in which he disparaged what he regarded as the "stern morality" of Malamud's second novel, "The Assistant." In the letter to his daughter, Malamud goes on to surmise that Roth "sought" the kiss "to signify I had forgiven him for the foolish egoistic essay he had written about my work." In dismissing what he also refers to as the "moral pathos" and "gentle religious coloration" of "The Assistant," Roth (complicatedly) preferred Norman Mailer's notorious essay, "The White Negro." That bombshell had appeared in 1957, the same year that saw the publication of "The Assistant." With shocking negative capability, Mailer argued that the murder of a middle-aged storekeeper by two hoodlums was a "psychopathic" person's way of "daring the unknown." Davis doesn't prove that Mailer had read "The Assistant," but Mailer was certainly familiar with the figure of the long-suffering, virtuous storekeeper from Malamud's short stories. So it's perfectly right to suggest, as Davis does, that Mailer's essay was a challenge to the novel's depiction of the middle-aged Bober as the saintly victim of a holdup man.
Library Journal Review
Murray, Britain's "unrepentant" ambassador to Uzbekistan, went mano a mano with head of state Islom Karimov over the torture of dissidents, never mind what London's Foreign Office thought. He doesn't have his job anymore, but he does have a movie deal with Paramount. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
