The Isle of Goats

The Isle of Goats is a novel based on the tensions, politics, and strife that has embroiled the Middle East for centuries. One of the most stable countries in the region is the United Arab Emirates, whose benevolent rulers have tried to develop a Western friendly culture based on trade, tourism, and finance while using its oil revenues to finance the development of its infrastructure. Starting as a series of simple fishing villages with gold-trading routes to the Far East, followed by a profitable oil business, the Emirates have become a model of progress and success with the tallest hotel in the world, indoor skiing, fabulous shopping, and an influx of wealthy Westerners that have made it a second home.


In order to retain a semblance of the old order, the UAE ruler, officially known as the President of UAE, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyn, decided to take a small island Sir (or Cer) Bani Yas and convert it to a private zoological preserve accessible to only the royal family, a difficult task since it was a desert with salty soil unfit for growth of anything. By sheer determination, the land was desalted and stocked with plants, birds, and wild animals, which were imported from all over the world.


The island, a seven-by-ten-kilometer spit of land, was then developed with several palaces, shelters, bird cages, and fishponds. In this scenario, the protagonist, with unexpected help from an ex-SEAL, stumble upon a greedy Sheikh, the governor of Sir Bani Yas. The governor has ambitions that undermine decades of loyalty between himself and the President of UAE to go beyond a simple scheme with a plan to overthrow the UAE government and replace it with a satrapy of Iran. Thus, an American company and its executive, Alvin Johnson, is caught in a cross fire between the government and a Sheikh determined to see him fail, and possibly die, before the plot is revealed to the world. All this stars with an untimely discovery of several bodies off Sir Bani Yas, triggering an investigation that leads to the unthinkable climax of the book.