Khadafy

Gildas Roberts is a university professor of English at the Memorial
University of Newfoundland.

Gregory traces the career of “Brother Colonel” Moammar Khadafy from his birth at some time during 1942 in a goatskin tent somewhere in the Libyan desert to the failed attempt by United States bombers to blast him to extinction in an infinitely more luxurious goatskin tent in Tripoli at 2:00 am. Libyan time on 16 April 1986.

The author’s name “Harry Gregory” is, according to the accompanying publicity flyer, “the pseudonym of a well-known journalist who has written extensively on Mid-Eastern politics for many major American publications.” Well, I suppose it all depends on what you mean by “major.” This book is far more redolent of the National Enquirer than the New Yorker. The prose-style is that of a slightly out-of-control word processor. Rhetorical questions and exclamation marks abound, as do single-word sentences/paragraphs: “OIL!”(p.5), “War!”(p.109), “Oil!”(p.172). There is no documentation, and no index.

And yet ... a wealth of fascinating material and analysis is provided. But then again one has to wonder at the reliability of it allwhen such egregious errors are committed as referring to the I.R.A. Provisionals as Protestant (p.91).

On balance, it must be concluded that even at the level of drugstore literature the complicated, ruthless, and potentially very dangerous Colonel Khadafy requires a far more serious study than this.