Rajaa Alsanea grew up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the daughter of a family of doctors. She currently lives in Chicago where she is a dental graduate student. She is twenty-five years old and this is her first novel.
Originally released in Arabic in 2005, Girls of Riyadh was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia due to controversial and inflammatory content. Black-market copies of the novel circulated and the daring originality of Girls of Riyadh continues to create a firestorm all over the Arab world and has been a bestseller across much of the Middle East.
Gamrah’s faith in her new husband is not exactly returned …
Sadeem is a little too willing to please her fiancé …
Michelle is half-American and the wrong class for her boyfriend’s family …
While Lamees works hard with little time for love.
The girls of Riyadh are young, attractive and living by Saudi Arabia’s strict cultural traditions. Well, not quite. In-between sneaking out behind their parents’ backs, dating, shopping, watching American TV and having fun, they’re still trying to be good little Muslim girls. That is, pleasing their families and their men.
But can you be a twenty-first century girl and a Saudi girl?
Raises important questions about self-respect, tolerance and emotional maturity…lifts the veil of an obscured worldBrave and surprisingly informative
'Highly readable…wonderfully vivid'
New StatesmanIrresistible and thought-provoking…an entertaining read: revealing, hilarious and chilling in turn
