Seventy-Two Virgins

''Seventy-Two Virgins: A Comedy of Errors'' is a 2004 novel by Boris Johnson. It received mixed reviews on original release.

Plot

The President of the United States plans to visit the Palace of Westminster. A Lebanese-born terrorist aims to assassinate him; Roger Barlow, a hapless, bicycle-riding, tousled-haired MP aims to foil the attack in order to distract from a scandal involving his financial entanglement in a lingerie shop named Eulalie.

Reception

''Seventy-Two Virgins'' received mixed reviews on original release. David Smith, writing for ''The Observer'', said "despite the pacy narration, there is a sense of going nowhere fast", but praised the humour, saying "Yet while Johnson is a heroic failure as a novelist, he scores in his comic handling of those most sensitive issues: the ideological motives of Muslim suicide bombers (whence the title) and the mixed blessings of the American empire. The playing of these as pantomime risks causing offence, but, as in person, Johnson succeeds in being charming and sincere."

''The Spectator'' (which Johnson was editing at the time) gave it a positive review, Douglas Hurd comparing it to P. G. Wodehouse (the plot device of a character being threatened by potential scandal regarding his involvement in a lingerie business named 'Eulalie' is lifted directly from Wodehouse's ''The Code of the Woosters'') and praising the "rollicking pace and continuous outpouring of comic invention"; however, he also said that it read like it had been written in three days. (Hurd also accurately described Johnson as "the next prime minister but three".)

In the ''Literary Review'', Philip Oakes said that the "Thrills eremuffled by relentless jokiness and inordinate length of book."

Attention was refocused on ''Seventy-Two Virgins'' in 2019, with Johnson poised to win the Conservative Party leadership election and become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In ''The Guardian'', Mark Lawson noted that "it's striking that Barlow's view – that public value should make private conduct irrelevant – is one the writer has continued to embrace through domestic troubles." He noted the anti-French and anti-American tone, and pointed out the use of offensive language: "references to 'Islamic headcases' and 'Islamic nutcases'. Arabs are casually noted to have ' hook noses' and ' slanty eyes'; a mixed-race Briton is called 'coffee-coloured'; and there are mentions of ' pikeys' and people who are 'half-caste'." Sexist content was also noted. More sinister was that "the suggestion – from both an external observer, and the protagonist's inner voice – that Barlow may be a fraud. His assistant worries that, under the jaunty vaudeville act, there are no real core ideals, values or beliefs." The novel was also criticised for depicting Jews as "controlling the media" and being able to "fiddle" elections, an evidently antisemitic trope. During the 2019 general election campaign, Catherine Bennett similarly argued that the novel "amounts to a compelling case for character reappraisal" and that its perceived tendency to evaluate women's worth "according to their fuckability on the – sometimes eccentric – Johnson scale" indicates a lack of "interest in addressing, for instance, sex discrimination, harassment, rthe gender pay gap".

References

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2004 British novels
Antisemitism in England
Books by Boris Johnson
British political novels
British satirical novels
Novels set in London
Novels about terrorism
HarperCollins books
Anti-Arabism
Antisemitic novels