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Author: Rajaa Al Sanea
Publisher: Ufuk Publishing House
Source: Purchased
Category: Fiction
Year: 2005
Translator: Syahid Widi Nugroho
Page Count: 406
ISBN: 9791238564
My rating: 3.0 out of 5.0
Goodreads' Blurb:
'Girls of Riyadh' captures the trials and tribulations of a middle-class society quite unlike our own and blows the lid off all our preconceptions of Arab life.
The late Ghazi Al Gosaibi, former Minister of Labor of Saudi Arabia, wrote the prologue of this book. He described how the story affected the public in the country. The revolution of thinking spread in instant, provoking further debates and speculations regarding the sensitive topics the author raised to the then-society which was known for their traditional perception.
This book is written in the form of e-mails, which were sent weekly by an anonymous narrator to any Saudi address she can find. The personal lives of the four main characters are to be the key story of the book. Gamrah is the first one who gets married between the four friends. She marries Rashed, the man to whom she has been betrothed by their parents, with only a few meetings before tying the knot. Gamrah thinks everything is going well with their marriage, after Rashed decides to move to the States for finishing his doctoral degree and takes her with him. It is the start when their marriage falls apart.
Sadeem accepts a marriage proposal from Walid, a son of a successful businessman in Saudi and she falls in love with him with a blink of an eye. Their relationship goes smooth and the date for a wedding has been set. This makes them decide to take the relationship in a more intimate way. However some days after, Walid terminates all contacts with Sadeem, turns her gleaming world into the dark.
Living in a multicultural family, where her father is a Saudi and her mother is from America, Michelle is accustomed into western liberalism way of thinking and often does not understand the Saudi tradition which she finds too confining. She then meets a young man, Faisal and their relationship grows. Faishal, who is then head over heels for her, asks his parents to propose for a marriage to her. However their love story has to meet a dead end when his parents do not approve Michelle's family heritage.
While Lumeis is introduced to Ali, a brother of one of her best friend, Fatimah, and her senior at medical school. At first, the relationship between them is only about Ali being her college tutor on several occasions. Fatimah contributes to make them closer as well. While Lumeis and Ali is having a date in a cafe, a group of sharia police approach them and allege them for violating dating rules.
I bought this book like six years ago and just recently had a time to read it. This is one of my bad habits; buying, piling books up and reading it years after xD
I am interested with the feminism theme the book brings when I read the blurb (as I took international relations major at college). The claim that this book had caused such commotion in the Far East countries, also made me curious to read it further.
I really like the story plot, since the author was really brave that she put her own safety on the line for the sake of revealing the truth and trying to trigger the revolution of thinking in the country. Starting from the then-view that a woman has to marry before age of twenty. I personally think that this contributes to the rash decision of Gamrah for getting married and which later she regrets, and the view that society needs to intervene in every relationship between man and woman.
Despite the interesting theme, I think the story cannot be categorized as novel, if it is to be seen from the format the author writes. As it has been mentioned above, this book is a written in the form of e-mails. The disjointed style of the storytelling, seems a little bit weird and the relationship between the four girls are not well developed. When I read the Indonesian version blurb and the first pages of the book, I expect the main story line would be about the friendship between the four on how they overcome the predicaments together. But I had to satisfy with the separated story of each character.
About the Author:
Rajaa Alsanea (Arabic: رجاء الصانع; variant spelling Rajaa al-Sanea)is a Saudi writer who became famous through her novel Girls of Riyadh, or Banat al-Riyadh. The book was first published in Lebanon in 2005 and in English in 2007. The book was long-listed for the Dublin Literary Award in 2009.Al-Sanea 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 received her bachelor's degree in Dentistry from King Saud University in 2005. Her novel and lifestyle have caused controversy especially among the conservative sections of the Saudi society but more liberal-minded individuals considered her a role model.
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