Laughing it up in the Middle East

Charlize Theron has acquired the screen rights to Christopher Buckley's satirical novel Florence of Arabia, which is apparently about "a State Dept. employee (to be played by Theron) who, after watching her friend marry the prince of a Middle East country and subsequently get executed, fights for equal rights for the women of that country".

Apart from the friend's execution bit, that sounds exactly like a Harlequin romance novel I read once.