THE INSHALLAH PAPER
Andrew Trimbee

'You don't need to have even a passing interest in the Gulf to find this hugely entertaining. Trimbee's snappy prose and the larger-than-life characters make this hard to believe it's not some off-beat 70s sitcom rather than reality.' 
News of the World

'This book reveals a time and place that will both shock and delight.'
The Sun

This modern version of One Thousand and One Nights is a colourful no-holds-barred account of life in a largely traditional Arabia as the author fights to produce the Gulf’s first English language newspaper.

Sex-mad expatriates, a ghost and a mermaid crowd the pages on an odyssey that includes a flying visit to the Middle East’s most famous casino, where he shows an oil company president how to win. There’s a veteran foreign correspondent who felled a world heavyweight boxing champion, and an assortment of characters; the good, the bad and the crooked.

From drunken diplomats to drunken journalists, Andrew Trimbee lifts the lid on life in a country where the Ruler shows a steel fist inside a velvet glove as he intervenes to save the newspaper after a dramatic showdown with directors.

There are lotharios and lesbians, a high seas murder, a two-fisted British prison warder, and the Bahrainis themselves, gentle and generous, who provide the backdrop for this revealing insight into a way of life largely gone, from the coffee ritual at the palace to crafts of yesteryear.

Set in a time when the pace of life was slower, in a sheikhdom that today has its own Formula One racetrack, The Inshallah Paper is a non-stop roller-coaster ride through drama, pathos, humour and suspense in a desert island setting straight out of the Arabian Nights.

Andrew Trimbee is a former national newspaper journalist who has worked on the Daily Mail, The Times, and the Daily Telegraph where he was a chief sub-editor. In addition to the Middle East, he has lived in Kenya, where he was on the staff of the East African Standard, and the South of France. A freelance writer, he now lives in a fisherman’s cottage on the North Yorkshire coast. He spends part of the year in a hilltop village near Granada, and travels extensively.