King Abdullah, like Godot, is an elusive figure who refuses to show up, so the wait becomes the agonised focus and central metaphor of the story. There is something very Beckettian about it all, from the stripped language to the air of tragicomedy that surrounds Alan, a fallen everyman blinded by his own existential suffering. Instead, Alan broods in his hotel room or walks around the desert landscape that will one day become the shiny new 'King Abdullah Economic City'. For most of the novel, the pitch does not happen. The highlight is a hologram which showcases the wizardry of the wares that his company hopes to sell. Alan Clay is a fifty-something salesman, arrived in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah with his team to make a pitch for a lucrative IT contract to King Abdullah himself. This could have led Eggers to tread on over-familiar, Harry Angstrom territory, yet the story is fresh. The mid-life crisis at the heart of this book is also representative of a crisis in American identity.
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