Brenna B. (demiducky25) reviewed on 7/6/2010 + 161 more book reviews

This is a very powerful read. We learn the story of Princess Sultana, a woman of privilege living in Saudi Arabia. This story takes place from approximately the 1970s or so until the early 1990s. Each chapter portrays a different story from Sultana's life or the life of someone she knew (family member, friend, etc). Throughout these various vignettes we learn that life for women in Saudi Arabia is very restrictive and often cruel, even for those born into privilege the way Sultana is (at one point the argument is made that poor women and rich women seem to have it worse than middle class women because often the middle class is content with only one wife because that is all they can afford so they typically are treated a bit better). We see how Sultana manages to survive the various mistreatments she faced during her life, and how other women didn't survive. Sultana wants to do something to help the women of her country, but can't in fear of jeopardizing her own safety and the safety of her daughters. I've read that some people don't feel that this is a true story and that it is something the author made up, but I think that is because those people don't want to believe that oppression and cruelty of this level still exist in our world today. We get snippets of these types of stories in the news every now and then, but unfortunately, it seems like nothing is really done about it. It's as if the attitude of "well it's not here and it's not affecting me" seems to be used to push these stories out of people's minds once the initial shock wears off. But read this book, and I can guarantee that you will not be able to push Sultana's story out of your mind. There are two other books that were written after this one, and I look forward to reading them in hopes that things may have improved for Sultana since they were written much later (this book originally came out in the early 90s, whereas the follow-up books came out in the 2000s).

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