For over two decades Ahmed Zaki Yamani was one of the most powerful men on earth. As both the oil minister for Saudi Arabia and the leading force behind OPEC, he was the star player in the world's biggest business.

   In 1975, he faced sudden death not once but twice. His mentor and lifelong support, the legendary King Faisal, was shot dead at his feet; and nine months later Yamani himself was kidnapped by the terrorist who was known as, "Carlos the Jackal," and only narrowly escaped with his life.

   Over the next 11 years, he strode across the world's stage a superstar in the media, until October 1986, when a terse government edict brought his life's career to an abrupt end.

   Based on hundreds of personal interviews, Jeffrey Robinson's gripping and intimate account opens a door to the very heart of one of the world's most controversial and fascinating statesmen.

"Superb... Robinson is in a class of his own."
-- Sunday Times

"A sizzler"
-- Today

"Bestselling writer Jeffrey Robinson has taken the lid off Yamani's life"
-- Sunday Express

"Robinson provides the reader with a portrait of a man who, while claiming he was nothing more than a simple bedouin, became a deft politician and media personality indelibly associated in the public mind with the rise in OPEC economic power and Saudi Arabia's leading position in global oil production."
-- Washington Report

"Rich in entertaining anecdote."
-- Financial Times

"In crisp, straightforward sentences, Robinson describes how Ahmed Zaki Yamani's close relationship with King Faisal, and his own urbane intelligence, made him the dominant industry figure worldwide."
-- Publishers Weekly

"Yamani emerges from the book as a man of intelligence and charm, deeply devoted to his family and his Moslem faith, who rose from a Mecca boyhood to become a jet-setting world figure and custodian of one-third of the non-communist world's oil."
-- Houston Post

"Riveting, fast paced..."
-- Globe and Mail

"Robinson weaves a fascinating tale."
-- San Francisco Chronicle