具体描述
D. M. Thomas s seventh novel is a brief
and brutally funny comedy in which an
American president and a Soviet premier
cross swords (and signals) at a surprise
summit meeting. At stake is world peace, at
issue is a state-of-the-art American defensive
missile system--and if the premise sounds
familiar, it s because fife is imitating art.
Summit, of course, is fiction.
As the novel opens, a red-haired, eternally
youthful American chief executive--a
former movie star, who suffers from an
inattention to detail (as well as from a per-
ceptual difficulty called "logotarditis," which
causes the sufferer to answer the question
preceding the one just asked)Iis being
threatened with impeachment as the rcsuh
of a bumbling interview. To distract national
attention from his lapses, President O Reilly
and his aides formulate a new global nuclear
