by Stefan Kanfer
This satirical novel about the United Nations is light as a bubble. The world organization here is called WEB. It's treated irreverently and so is network television news. The hero is TV newsman Alec Lessing. His boss, General Wolfe, is an eccentric who owns the network and sends Lessing to cover WEB, a limbo assignment. The general tells him, "Mrs. Wolfe has exacting standards, but she's never wrong. She knew you would be a first-class investigative reporter the second she saw your chin." (Lessing's chin is cleft.) There are terrorists, of course, and every room seems to be bugged. Bribery is rampant. One just-emerging nation turns out to be nonexistent. New York City isn't an especially wonderful place in this funny book either. Lessing attends a musical comedy based on Beowulf; the theater is shabby, the beast a klutzy robot, the tickets $100 each. Such stray moments are among the most entertaining in an elaborate, carefully crafted book that has too much truth in its outrageous plot. Kanfer, a senior editor at TIME, is the author of three other books. (Norton, $13.95)
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