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 of babylon, rivers and/or babylon:
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept: when we remembered Zion.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms, 137:1.
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“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)