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Arabel: The Plague Chronicles Paperback – January 1, 2005

5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 5 ratings
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  1. Print length
    448 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    EarthMarks Gruppe
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2005
  5. ISBN-10
    0971142580
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0971142589
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ EarthMarks Gruppe; First Edition (January 1, 2005)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0971142580
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0971142589
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 5 ratings

Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
5 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

L. C. Penhallegon
5.0 out of 5 stars Arabel: The Plague Chronicles
Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2008
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This was an exceptional book, too real with possibilities to not be more widely read. Hopefully government planners are among those who have read it. Clayton Penhallegon
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Katrina Smallwood
5.0 out of 5 stars He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2005
..........Before 9/11, I doubt I'd have bought ARABEL. I then had no fear of Islam's Jihadist killers. Now, four years later, I suggest anyone seeking to understand this war should buy this translated book. Is ARABEL indeed this war's first novel? I find it is realistically scary, riveting, and a page turner. Alexandra Paris, the author, yet uses several devices to lighten the darkness.
..........In the musical "Mary Poppins", a lyric of universal truth is that "a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down." ARABEL's plot is quite medicinal, a fictional warning, a bitter prophylactic to us in the non-Muslim U.S., slandered by Jihadists as the "Great Satan." (A Christian, I despise and fear Satan. I infer that Islam and I worship different Gods. My home is the "Great Satan"? I think not.) The author yet leavens this grim medicine with timely passages of dry wit, a literary sweetener sprinkled through the frightful plot.
..........ARABEL benefits from several helpful customer reviews. One might read them all. They describe the plot elements. I am here interested in one of the author's quirky, yet graceful ploys, among several, which leaven the grimness. I write of author Paris' pizza-guys, their "Pakistani Pizzaria" being a small but "famous" Manhattan business.
..........I'm as well interested in the grim prophylactic-medicine aspect of ARABEL. I've a thought on how the novel's "Manifesto of Jihadist Action", an afterword's murderous set of quasi-fictional ideas, is seemingly balanced in the plot by a lethal Christian doctrine.

..........l. ARABEL's LEVITY..... At Part One's conclusion comes the funeral of the ex-CIA agent Stephen Blackpool. He'd unintentionally killed Arabel's maternal twin, Marzia, on the island of Corfu. Arabel in turn has brutally assassinated Blackpool in New York's Central Park. The character Christopher Bly has attended the funeral.
............... Later "THAT FUNERAL EVENING," a morose Bly "FINDS SADNESS." Homeward-bound, "DOWNSTAIRS ON...SNOWBOUND WINTER STREETS," he finds "CARS IN WAITING LIKE THE DEAD...." Now appear the Islamic pizza-guys.
..............."'If you can READ this you're too damn CLOSE,' warns the bumper sticker. The car's door reads `Pakistani Pizzaria'." (end quote)
.........The German playright Bertolt Brecht dangerously poked laughter at the evil Adolph Hitler. Brecht has an admirer in the author of ARABEL. Alexandra Paris would agree with Brecht's recorded wisdom that "he who laughs has not yet heard the bad news." E.g., a major character in the novel is a German journalist, who's traveled to New York to report the urban warfare and smallpox outbreak. Mephisto is a pizza fan. The following excerpt poses a laugh followed, as Brecht warned, by bad news. (I note that in ARABEL is expurgated its infrequently indelicate wording.)
..............."He's in his news bureau on West Forty-Seventh Street. Eric Mephisto has an empty stomach in a littered newsroom. He orders from the Pakistani Pizzeria. A skinny Pakistani, who speaks the King's English and doesn't eat his fatty product, delivers a pizza.
..............."'THE BIG CITIES OF AMERICA ARE BECOMING THIRD-WORLD SH-T HOLES,' asserts the ill-tempered Pakistani. `I SOUGHT ESCAPE FROM SUCH A SHI-T HOLE.'
..............."'YOU'RE BEING A NASTY BIGOT,' suggests the German, astonished.
..............."'WHATEVER,' says the Pakistani. `BIGOTRY STARTED A LONG TIME AGO. NOBODY KNOWS WHERE. I THINK,' the pizza guy concludes, `THE MISERABLE FRENCH STARTED IT.' In agreement now, the immodest German tips the man well." (end quote)
..........Except for dwindling admirers of France, this humor is much needed levity. Then, just as warned by the playright Brecht, the bad news, the war. "OUTSIDE, BLOWN DOWN FROM THE BRONX HILLS, THE PAKISTANI SMELLS THE BLUE SMOKE, ACRID AND FOUL, SWIRLING DOWN FROM BURNING BUILDINGS."

..........2. ARABEL's GRIM CONFLICT.....As for many infidel Americans, this world war frightens me. Our World War Two enemies did not target civilians such as me. Soldier fought soldier. These cowardly yet clever Muslim Jihadists avoid military defenses. They aim to kill unarmed civilians. This means me. Some levity, such as the pizza-guys of the fictional "Pakistani Pizzaria," leaven the fright in the novel, but the novel's fictional projection remains grim. As counter-balance to the "Manifesto of Jihadist Action", I yet find in ARABEL a doctrinal response from us in the U.S., the Jihadists' targets and their enemies.
..........At the time of Arabel Akbar's soldiering for Islam, Jihadists are directed by clear-cut religious and ideological guidance. In ARABEL's Afterwords, this guidance is specified, written, in the fictional "Manifesto." Christianity in opposition can juxtapose no such detailed manifesto. Led by the U.S. and the U.K., early espousing a secular, freedom-motivation, religious opponents of Jihad are individual and private in their religious motivations. (I here write of the real world.)
..........In two renowned Christian principles -- while not an efficient manifesto -- are yet formidable motivation. The first principle, early held in private by Christian soldiers, is awareness from the Bible's Book of Ephesians at 6:12. "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places." Islam's millions of Jihadists, contend Christian soldiers, are sent from the rulers of darkness. The enemy is thus identified.
.......... What's to be done? It is on to the war. And the Islamic Jihadist aggressors are deemed most profoundly sinful. The Christian soldiers' response is authorized by the Christian God. The "wages of sin is death...." Romans 6:23. The Jihadists who wage war must be put to death.
. ..........In ARABEL, these two Biblical principles -- from Ephesians 6:12 and Romans 6:23 -- are contended by the character Jane Smiley. She speaks in conversation with the characters Bly and Papravel.
..............."'MY DEARS,' THE DOYEN CONTINUES, `WE CHRISTIANS NOW WRESTLE NOT AGAINST MERE FLESH AND BLOOD BUT AWESOME ISLAMIC AGGRESSION PROMISING US PERPETUAL DARKNESS. AND I AGREE...THESE JIHADISTS ARE A SINFUL CROWD. THEIR WAGES MUST BE DEATH...'"
..........A dose of Biblical medicine? In grim times, I recommend ARABEL most highly for Muslims of peace and for us Christians and infidels, now playing too much defense and not enough offense. One Jihadist nuclear bomb within the U.S., and all our lives will worsen, badly and forever.
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Rick Calvani
5.0 out of 5 stars Islamic Jihadist aggression vs. Christians, other infidels
Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2005
.........Paris, as in France. A friend had been there, and I browsed "Paris" at Amazon to buy my a book gift about the city. Instead I bought author Alexandra Paris' ARABEL. Some say novels of late are mostly frivolous. Lots of serial-killer plots, goofy sex, drugs and technological gizmo elements. ARABEL is something else. It's 448 pages on a deadly serious plot-line. This novel is not frivolous.

.........Widely respected novelists include Amazon authors Graham Greene, Paul Theroux and Nelson de Mille. In ARABEL, the European author, Paris, combines their traits. Like Greene she portrays people facing evil while seeking spiritual redemption. As does Theroux, author Paris portrays settings well and seems expert on human meanness and a certain dementia in everyday life. And she thrills and seems prescient, a predictor of things to come. Maybe. Take DeMille. He forecasted September 11, 2001. A year earlier, in DeMille's THE LION'S GAME, his character who's a police official looks at the World Trade Centers from his office window. A plane is seen. He then thinks that "jetliners are little more than flying bombs...." Did Osama bin Laden take notes? Now we meet Arabel and her sack full of smallpox virions in this new novel. The following paragraph is from pages 270-271.

........."MANHATTAN, February 20, Wednesday, 7:00 a.m.... A pedestrian is bundled against wind and cold. Arabel has begun her third day of dispersing. The smallpox demons are being sprinkled in 27 sites.... She'd had a young man during the night. The Plaza Hotel. He watched from shadows, he of hard and chisled body, while she dressed this morning. He said her sleep clattered with unfamiliar voices. She didn't tell him she'd just poisoned 250 people the day before. He said there's no mercy in her silence. She heard a roaring in her ears. Believing him, she left money and closed the door...." It turns out that the mere "250 people" poisoned are "vectors" or plague-carriers. And "each victim as vector, the terrorist knows, would infect perhaps 18 other people on average....Invisible respiratory haloes...would touch hundreds. Tens of thousands, if one's good at arithmetic."

.........It's a privilege that Amazon affords. Publishing a review, readable instantly in places like Paris or across town. I've this graduate seminar, and a book review's soon due. So here's a serious effort, for seminar and Amazon. Let me share how ARABEL's plot works. Does Arabel Akbar live, perhaps next to bring a nuclear device our way?

.........Bad news is ARABEL's smallpox will kill one in three persons, gays with HIV and immune-weakened persons, but good news is vaccine can reduce infection. Bad news is vaccine is in short supply. Good news is this novel has an endnote alone worth the price. The endnote reveals the "Manifesto of Jihadist Action" and the fearsome QUR'AN-based guidelines for world domination. This novel poses no gratuitous coarse language, violence or sex. Certain coarse language is expurgated. However, it does treat very dark issues of war, religious strife, life, and death. Compare Graham Greene, Paul Theroux and Nelson deMille. See also, and one also can buy these on Amazon, the holy BIBLE and Islam's holy QUR'AN.

.........Weaponized smallpox, weak U.S. counter-terrorism protections, and lethal Islamic Jihadist forces -- these three conditions of fearful consequence undergird ARABEL. The story centers in New York City, while the protagonists draw upon experiences in sites scattered in Indonesia, Asia, Africa and Europe. ARABEL Akbar is an Islamic Jihadist terrorist. Her duties are lethal, first of personal vendetta, to kill the CIA operative who murdered her twin sister on the Aegean island of Corfu. Her Jihad assignment is unleashing of the plague of smallpox and presenting of demands to U.S. leadership.

.........New Yorkers, bloodied on nine-eleven by airborne Jihadists, are initial victims. In three parts, the novel's Part One, of eight chapters, is "Vendetta." Part Two, entitled "Jihad" in eight chapters tells of the terroristic smallpox epidemic in New York City. As the terrorist does reconnaissance, her presence, duties and identity are revealed to Christopher Bly. He had been terminated from the CIA in the early 1990s. An erudite Middle Eastern expert, one fluent in the Arabic language, Bly was displaced by glitzy high-technology intelligence. After nine-eleven, he is rehired to head one of several translation bureaus, his in Manhattan. ARABEL's vendetta target, Stephen Blackpool, like Bly had left the CIA to join the faculty at New York's Columbia University. Part Three takes place in Switzerland, dénouement. Alexandra Paris lives in Bern, Switzerland, and in reading the last two chapters, I felt like I was walking its streets.

.........Part One opens with ARABEL's clandestine entry aboard a ship owned by Osama bin Laden. A secret passenger aboard the freighter "Elizabeth," she comes ashore at Brooklyn's docks. The "apparent seaman" is one who "turns and walks down a tenement street... lethal invader...of the Great Satan." Part One ends with Professor Blackpool's assassination in Central Park, with the "great heart of Stephen Blackpool -- killer of Marzia Akbar and her two children, husband of Eleni, beloved father of young Moses and Ruth...shutting down."

.........Part Two as "Jihad" poses eight chapters of ARABEL's undetected spreading of the smallpox disease. Her tactics are successful, the terrible viral disease being spread into "Battery Park General Hospital." Even after her accurate mugshot is televised on "America's Most Wanted," the terrorist eludes capture. She is a trained actress, multilingual and a mistress of disguises. Her disguises include "a young German male of post-modern sexuality," a bag-lady with missing teeth, and a bent-over stroke victim.

.........The scenario is frightening in its plausibility. Islam's Jihadists deliver an ultimatum to the U.S. government: withdraw U.S. forces from the Middle East, and compel Israel to commence dismantling its settlements toward evacuation of occupied Palestine territories within three days. If not, weaponized smallpox will be disseminated beyond New York City in all fifty states. Part Two unfolds during the New York City epidemic as the CDC defensive plan is effected. Failed containment of the lethal disease is against a backdrop of enforced quarantine areas which devolve into urban warfare when possibly infected residents resist orders not to travel. As well, a Brooklyn Jihadist group kills thousands of terrified New Yorkers by bombs and bullets. I most strongly recommend this fierce novel. Its plot instructs us on real-life threats to families, civilians no longer safe. May I recall my friend was there? If one could only endure the French. Maybe Paris, as in France, is yet safer for now than life within the Great Satan.
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