© WTA Publishing
Sustaining Dugoud
Sustaining Dugoud - a satirical novel by David Woods
The tragicomic world of international organizations and negotiations is the background to the tongue- in-cheek satire, “Sustaining Dugoud”. Everyone has now heard of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the ex- Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. We became familiar with the face of Ban Ki- moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, as he and his staff sought to manage global crises. For every familiar face, there are another dozen or more influential, but largely unknown, personalities heading up a plethora of international agencies. Who are these people? How do they get to be appointed? What kind of lives do they lead? Do they make a difference, or are they just bureaucratic time-servers? And what about the diplomatic world in which they operate? As competition for these posts intensifies, Stephen Dugoud’s experience would teach the candidates much. Certainly, the output of global agencies and their leaders can be serious and valuable, sometimes crucial. Too often, however, what emerges from protracted and largely meaningless multilateral gasbagging is laughably inadequate or irrelevant. Frequently, it is public relations froth. David Woods has reason to know. After a period as a journalist, he spent 12 years of his career in senior public information roles in Whitehall. He was a press secretary to a succession of British government ministers. He subsequently moved to Geneva where he worked as Director of Information and press spokesman at the World Trade Organization and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Woods operated alongside three successive Directors-General and provided the public face of key multilateral trade negotiations over 13 years in Geneva. He saw the good and the not so good of international organizations. As a journalist by background, he knows how to portray the reality. But he peppers it with a touch of fantasy. He does so with a sense of fun. He hopes readers will be amused – and preferably laugh out loud – at this tale of a second-grade civil servant, nearing retirement, suddenly plucked from obscurity to stand as candidate to run the Agency for Sustainable Investment in Geneva. The motives of Her Majesty’s Government in seeking the job for him are dubious. But the Prime Minister reckons without the stubborn side of Stephen Dugoud. And Dugoud finds himself in an unexpected world of perks and pratfalls, dysfunctional administrators, over-sexed diplomats, irreconcilable conflicts of interest, tricky ethnic issues and much more. Even his wife, Joan, turns out not to be quite the person he thought. The characters are fictional. The situations they find themselves in are less so. The backdrop of economic crisis, fear of globalization, obsessional mistrust of foreigners, and aversion to change is disturbingly real. SUSTAINING DUGOUD is available at Amazon.com in digital and paperback versions.
© WTA Publishing
Sustaining Dugoud
Sustaining Dugoud - a satirical novel by David
Woods
The tragicomic world of international organizations and negotiations is the background to the tongue-in-cheek satire, “Sustaining Dugoud”. Everyone has now heard of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the ex- Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. We became familiar with the face of Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, as he and his staff sought to manage global crises. For every familiar face, there are another dozen or more influential, but largely unknown, personalities heading up a plethora of international agencies. Who are these people? How do they get to be appointed? What kind of lives do they lead? Do they make a difference, or are they just bureaucratic time-servers? And what about the diplomatic world in which they operate? As competition for these posts intensifies, Stephen Dugoud’s experience would teach the candidates much. Certainly, the output of global agencies and their leaders can be serious and valuable, sometimes crucial. Too often, however, what emerges from protracted and largely meaningless multilateral gasbagging is laughably inadequate or irrelevant. Frequently, it is public relations froth. David Woods has reason to know. After a period as a journalist, he spent 12 years of his career in senior public information roles in Whitehall. He was a press secretary to a succession of British government ministers. He subsequently moved to Geneva where he worked as Director of Information and press spokesman at the World Trade Organization and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Woods operated alongside three successive Directors-General and provided the public face of key multilateral trade negotiations over 13 years in Geneva. He saw the good and the not so good of international organizations. As a journalist by background, he knows how to portray the reality. But he peppers it with a touch of fantasy. He does so with a sense of fun. He hopes readers will be amused – and preferably laugh out loud – at this tale of a second-grade civil servant, nearing retirement, suddenly plucked from obscurity to stand as candidate to run the Agency for Sustainable Investment in Geneva. The motives of Her Majesty’s Government in seeking the job for him are dubious. But the Prime Minister reckons without the stubborn side of Stephen Dugoud. And Dugoud finds himself in an unexpected world of perks and pratfalls, dysfunctional administrators, over-sexed diplomats, irreconcilable conflicts of interest, tricky ethnic issues and much more. Even his wife, Joan, turns out not to be quite the person he thought. The characters are fictional. The situations they find themselves in are less so. The backdrop of economic crisis, fear of globalization, obsessional mistrust of foreigners, and aversion to change is disturbingly real. SUSTAINING DUGOUD is available at Amazon.com in digital and paperback versions.
