Upper West Side Philosophers Publishing

THE ZUCCHINI CONSPIRACY:
A Novel of Alternative Facts
(November 21, 2019)

Available as an eBook at Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, and other fine eBook retailers.

Timothy Balding

ISBN 978-1-935830-67-2 (print)
ISBN 978-1-935830-68-9 (ebook)

The United States and Bangistan, a former Soviet satellite dictatorship, are edging towards nuclear conflict. At any moment, their war of words, insults and threats may escalate into an exchange of missiles and an apocalypse. In the White House, President Ronald Rump hesitates between negotiating a peace agreement and employing the full might of the American war machine, as the hawks around him advise that, rather than talk, he should wipe Bangistan off the world map. In the Presidential Palace of Petrobangorski, Great Leader Hakim Akim meanwhile ruminates on the advantages he might draw from the conflict. The world holds its breath as a last-ditch face-to-face meeting between Rump and Akim is finally announced to resolve the crisis. Can the US President clinch the deal, denuke Bangistan, and bring in a new era of peace? Or will Rump, deaf to all advice, abandon the talks in a fit of anger and order the military to raze the Bangistan capital? The hour is grave and the risk perhaps too great to leave to a roll of the dice … A small band of diplomats, politicians and spy agencies from the US and its allied nations, aided by several unwitting French peasants, believes so, and secretly plots to make sure Rump is never put to the test. The Zucchini Conspiracy is born ...

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“...‘the first-ever Donald Trump novel’ ... a free-wheeling farce, a three-ring circus ... politically pointed ... burlesque ... supremely silly and cheerful—think Kingsley Amis with all the black bile drained out ... moving quickly, amiably, wittily ... a fizzy romp with an inspired bit of slapstick near the end.”

KIRKUS REVIEWS

“This book is a masterpiece of hilarious and delightful nonsense. What kind of mischievous mind can conjure up, for a doppelgänger of Donald Trump, a fat peasant woman who only speaks an obscure dialect from the South of France? What kind of ingenious intelligence can devise a plot where such a double can carry off a plot to deceive a foreign power in critical nuclear disarmament negotiations? Answer: the kind that belongs to author Timothy Balding.

What credible explanation could there be, for instance, that would place a pyjama-clad British Prime Minister called Theresa in the bedroom of the US president with a knotted rope in her hand? None that I can think of. But never mind, suspend your disbelief and embark on a roller coaster of laughs and chuckles that will keep the pages turning until the end of the book.

But, of course, as always with Timothy, there is a serious underbelly to this political farce. The author takes an incisive scalpel to the municipal politics of rural France and the intrigues and ambitions of diplomats and politicians. Then he heaves a huge axe through the inflated ego of the current US president.

The result is a book that everyone but the most fervent Trump followers will love. Outstanding fun. Don’t miss it.”

THE VOICE OF LITERATURE

ISBN 978-1-935830-67-2 (print)
ISBN 978-1-935830-68-9 (ebook)
Publication Date: December 15, 2019

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in 1954 in London of mixed Scottish and English parentage, Timothy Balding grew up and was educated on a British military base in Germany. He left school and his family at the age of sixteen to return alone to the United Kingdom, where he was hired as a reporter on local newspapers in Reading in the county of Berkshire. For the ensuing decade, he worked on local and regional titles and then at Press Association, the national news agency, covering politics in Westminster, the British Parliament. Balding exiled himself to Paris, France, in 1980, and spent the next thirty years working for international, non-governmental organizations. For twenty-five of these, he was Chief Executive Officer of the World Association of Newspapers, the representative global group of media publishers and editors, established after World War II to defend the freedom and independence of the press worldwide. A Knight (First Class) in the Order of the White Rose of Finland — an honor accorded him by Nobel Peace laureate Martti Ahtisaari, former Finnish President — Timothy Balding currently lives in France and devotes himself to writing. The Impostors is his second novel.

READ EXCERPTS FROM ZUCCHINI CONSPIRACY

THE ZUCCHINI CONSPIRACY: A Novel of Alternative Facts — Timothy Balding in Conversation

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