Princess Sultana's Daughters
by Jean Sasson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jean SassonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-03-01
ISBN: 0967673755
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Windsor-Brooke Books, LLC
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780967673752
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Princess Sultana's Daughters
Book Review: A fantastic fairytale
Summary: 1 Stars
Jean Sasson's 'Princess' trilogy is a heady, thrilling cocktail of erotica, exotica, and sheer spine-chilling barbarism that will turn the blood of most Western readers thick with cold. 'Daughters of Arabia', the second sensational installment of wealth, corruption, and appalling crime within the royal family circles, reads like a fairytale.
I have lived in Saudi Arabia as an English Christian woman for the past seventeen years, and - along with many other expatriates - I believe that there is something fishy about the 'Princess' trilogy. For one thing, the books are riddled with mistakes - mistakes that anyone who has more than a nodding acquaintanceship with Saudi culture and religion will instantly be able to detect. Here is just a small sample of the glaring errors that I found within 'Daughters of Arabia'.
Princess Sultana's second daughter, Amani, is a Muslim fundamentalist who covers her hair all the time and even goes so far as to wear black gloves, black stockings, and the thickest veil whenever she steps outdoors. Yet Amani is also a passionate animal lover. She keeps dogs.
Alarm bells should now be ringing for anyone who is remotely familiar with Islam. Dogs are considered spiritually unclean by even moderate Muslims; they believe that it is impossible to pray in any room where a dog has set foot, until it has been purified. This is why there was such outrage in Iraq when American soldiers attempted to search houses with sniffer-dogs - it wasn't the search that people objected to, but the use of an animal that is second only to a pig in the uncleanliness stakes. In her first book, 'Princess', Jean Sasson herself mentions that dogs 'are not favoured by Muslims'. And yet she now wants us to believe that this raving fundamentalist girl not only keeps a pack of dogs as pets, but actually encourages them to urinate on her uncle and drink out of his glass? Even though respect for one's elders is an enormous part of Muslim culture? I don't think so. My suspicions deepened when I read on Jean Sasson's website that she herself is an ardent animal lover whose favourite hobby is rescuing abandoned strays. How...convenient.
Also convenient is the fact that Amani's sister Maha is her complete opposite in personality, going so far as to renounce Islam in favour of American rock music and a lesbian relationship. I find it very difficult to believe that the same set of broad-minded parents could have produced such radically different girls. The gulf between their personalities sparks much tension and conflict, which of course is a useful narrative technique in any novel. But this isn't meant to be a novel, is it?
The language that these royals use is extremely convoluted and archaic, peppered with arcane proverbs and filled with starchy grammatical constructions. Their dialgoue might easily have been lifted straight from the 'Arabian Nights'; I am only surprised that Sasson didn't make them say 'thee' and 'thou' instead of 'you'. Modern-day Saudis just don't talk like this. I know; I speak quite good Arabic. None of the conversations in this book ring true.
Coupled with these mistakes are the many lurid references to female circumcision. That is an African tribal practice; it has never ever been widespread in the Arab world, although Sasson gives the false impression that it happens to every single Saudi girl. She implicitly suggests that the keeping of concubines and unjust temporary marriages are also a big part of Saudi life, when they are virtually unheard-of. Oh, abuse of women goes on over here - I've seen it with my own eyes. Saudi Arabian women hold fifty-two percent of the university degrees and only six percent of the jobs. That's discriminatory. That's demeaning. Why doesn't Sasson write about this, I wonder? Could it be because lack of educational opportunity isn't topical and fascinating and frightening? Because it doesn't make the bestseller list?
Even if there is a kernel of truth in 'Daughters of Arabia', what good has this book accomplished? American women buy the book under the fond delusion that they are helping these bejewelled Eastern beauties in some small way. Nothing could be further from the truth. The book is banned in Saudi Arabia, and anyone who has any knowledge of the Saudi reverence for privacy will know that this kind of hurtful and over-exaggerated expose will only damage women's rights, rather than further them. Change has to come from within the Kingdom, not from without. Today I went to Jarir Bookstores (the Saudi answer to Barnes and Noble) and found a stack of poetry anthologies by Nimah Ismail Nawwab. 'The Unfurling' is a deeply honest book that calls for change at a profound level. One of the poems even damns the infamous religious police. And no one is rushing to arrest her, to beat her, to execute her - instead, they're inviting her to speak at King Fahd University and giving her book awards. While Sasson rakes in the cash, Nawwab is quietly working for the cause that Sasson claims to be so passionate about - only Nawwab has her eyes trained on real issues, not fabricated ones.
All Sasson's books have achieved is to to force Saudi Arabian ladies to carry unbearable burdens on their veiled shoulders. If a Saudi lady visits the West and chooses to keep her veil on, she can't walk down the street without some well-meaning woman gazing after her and wondering whether she chooses to dress like that or whether she's brainwashed, whether she's beaten, whether she's crying behind her mask, whether she wants to be freed or whether she hasn't realised how unlucky she is. Saudi friends of mine have told me that they get extremely tired of having to dispel these stereotypes. In short, all Sasson has done is to create extra work for Saudi women. I'm not sure that they're all that grateful.
Summary of Princess Sultana's Daughters
Reader's of Princess Sultana's true story, Princess, were gripped by her powerful indictment of women's lives behind the veil within the royal family of Saudi Arabia. Now, the princess and Jean Sasson turn the spotlight on Sultana's two teenage daughters, Maha and Amani. During her own youth, Sultana chafed under the harsh social system into which she was born. Today, despite untold wealth and privilege, Princess Sultana cannot buy the rights and freedoms women in other cultures possess, for herself, or for her daughters. Although Sultana lives with a constant fear of retribution--even death at the hand of her own father or brother, her passion to provide her two daughters with a better life transcends her fear and fuels her desire for change.As second-generation members of the royal family who have benefited from Saudi oil wealth, Maha and Amani have known nothing but opulence and wealth from the moment of their birth. Yet, stilled by the unbearable restrictive lifestyle imposed on them, Maha and Amani have reacted in equally desperate ways.Maha is a headstrong beauty driven by fear and isolation due to Saudi Arabia's feudal justice. Described by her father as a "girl of brilliant fragments," Maha's gifted mind cannot focus on one goal. When Maha becomes involved in a lesbian relationship, she ends having an emotional breakdown and requires psychiatric treatment in London. Amani, the youngest daughter, rebels in her way during the religious frenzy of Haj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Makkah. Once a sweet and placid animal-lover, Amani emerges "almost overnight from her dormant religious faith and embraces Islamic beliefs with unnerving intensity." Amani's fundamental fanaticism threatens to destroy her mother's personal quest to imporove women's lot in her native land. With candor and humility, Sultana shares the joy, frustration, and "dark intervals of my fear" of Saudi Arabian motherhood and marriage. She details the difficulties inherent in raising dRoyalty Books
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