The Italian ambassador, Pietro Quaroni, describes diplomacy as "a front-row seat in the theater of life." It's a fitting description when the diplomat is a spectator, watching events unfold and history being made. However, there are times in a diplomat's life when they become the protagonist of the story, finding themselves not in a comfortable front-row seat, but at the very center of the stage, under the spotlights, with all eyes upon them.

This book contains a collection of stories enacted on the stage of life, featuring diplomats destined to leave the spectators' ranks for the stage itself, to tread its boards and play the roles chosen for them: "... They are all true stories, with no fictional additions or manipulation of facts. They happened to diplomats whom I have named, and I have crafted them in a style where the rules of storytelling were not allowed to alter the events, nor were historical facts and dry events permitted to distort their narrative form..."

• Author: Najdat Fathi Safwat
• Publishing House: Dar Al Saqi for Publishing & Distribution
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Number of Pages: 304
• ISBN: 9781855166509