By the Rivers of Babylon is a 1978 thriller novel by Nelson DeMille.
The plot focuses on two new Concorde jets that are flying to a U.N. meeting that will bring peace to the Middle East. However, en route to the meeting, the crews are advised by radio that bombs were hidden during the aircraft's manufacture, and they are forced on to an alternate route. One jet ignores warnings and is destroyed by remote control, and the other crash lands near the ruins of Babylon. Once crashed, the occupants of the jet must defend themselves against an army of Palestinian troops while the Israelis attempt to mount a rescue mission.
Famous quotes containing the words rivers and/or babylon:
“Poor shad! where is thy redress? When Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart to bear thy fate? Still wandering the sea in thy scaly armor to inquire humbly at the mouths of rivers if man has perchance left them free for thee to enter.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The stars which shone over Babylon and the stable in Bethlehem still shine as brightly over the Empire State Building and your front yard today. They perform their cycles with the same mathematical precision, and they will continue to affect each thing on earth, including man, as long as the earth exists.”
—Linda Goodman (b. 1929)