Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia, Vol. 1 by Jean Sasson, Jean P. Sasson

From the Publisher

Sultana is a Saudi Arabian princess, a woman born to fabulous, uncountable wealth. She has four mansions on three continents, her own private jet, glittering jewels, designer dresses galore. But in reality she lives in a gilded cage. She has no freedom, no vote, no control over her own life, no value but as a bearer of sons. Hidden behind her black floor-length veil, she is a prisoner, jailed by her father, her husband, her sons, and her country. Sultana is a member of the Saudi royal family, closely related to the king. For the sake of her daughters, she has decided to take the risk of speaking out about the life of women in her country, regardless of their rank. She must hide her identity for fear that the religious leaders in her country would call for her death to punish her honesty. Only a woman in her position could possibly hope to escape from being revealed and punished, despite her cloak of anonymity. She tells of her own life, from her turbulent childhood to her arranged marriage - a happy one until her husband decided to displace her by taking a second wife - and of the lives of her sisters, her friends, and her servants. Although they share affection, confidences and an easy camaraderie within the confines of the women's quarters, they also share a history of appalling oppressions, everyday occurrences that in any other culture would be seen as shocking human rights violations: thirteen-year-old girls forced to marry men five times their age, young women killed by drowning, stoning, or isolation in the "woman's room," a padded, windowless cell where women are confined with neither light nor conversation until death claims them. Servants are forced into sexual servitude and severely beaten if they attempt escape. By speaking out, Sultana risks bringing the wrath of the Saudi establishment upon her head and the heads of her children. In the barren, hopeless wasteland that is the life of Saudi women today, free speech is punishable by death.

Booklist - Denise Perry Donavin

Sasson was asked by a friend, a member of the Saudi royal family, to write this candid depiction of her life. Princess Sultana (a pseudonym, although how her identity can be kept secret when so many specific details of her life are spelled out is a mystery) is a woman who since birth has been surrounded by monumental wealth yet has lived under barbaric socioreligious constraints. Many have heard or read of the veils worn by Saudi women, their arranged marriages, and even their executions for moral missteps such as being raped by family members. Sasson's first-person narrative puts the whole nightmarish experience into perspective. Sultana has divulged how her existence as a female was disdained from earliest childhood by her taunting brother and contemptuous father.

She spells out the horror stories of her sister's forced marriage as the fourth wife of an abusive older man, of a friend's lifetime confinement in a dark attic room for falling in love with a westerner while studying in London, of her sister's maiming circumcision, and of countless other acts supposedly justified by religious tradition but actually intended to maintain male dominion over Saudi women. Throughout, the princess's feisty spirit is the book's saving feature. Her conniving and arrogant refusal to conform to this system are marvelous yet heart-breaking to behold. Human rights, not solely women's rights, are at issue here.

Holly Smith

While living in Saudi Arabia, Jean Sasson befriends a woman named Sultana. Sultana wants her life to be known and she gives Jean her diaries and notes, entrusting her to write her life story. Jean does, changing names and places for protection. The result is a vivid depiction of the restrictions of Saudi Arabian society and the raw, corrupt, and unquestionable power of the royal males and religious leaders. Born into the royal family in 1956, the independent is the tenth daughter and the youngest of her mother's living children. By age fifteen, Sultana has seen her brother participate in the rape of an eight-year-old, brought her seventeen-year-old sister home after an attempted suicide because of her forced marriage to a sadistic fifty-three-year-old man, and buried her mother. Sultana marries, and at home dresses as she pleases and voices her opinions about the inequities she lives, though usually her views are ignored.

Outside her home she must cover herself completely in black and is expected to be subservient in every way. Talks with Marci, her Filipino maid since birth, expose Sultana to the countless wrongs suffered by foreign workers in Saudi Arabia. Sultana's lifestyle - which includes four homes, shopping trips to Europe, and gardens in the desert - contrasts sharply with what she learns from Marci and causes her further anguish and anger. Princess is an intimate look at one woman's struggle against the injustices of an extremely repressive society.

USA Today

Must reading for anyone interested in human rights...

Publishers Weekly

Another page turner...

People

Absolutely riveting and profoundly sad...

Kirkus Reviews

A fascinating look at the lifestyles of the rich and Saudi.

Oxford Review

Fascinating...one is compelled to read just one more page, one more chapter once one has started this Arabian nightmare.

Publishers Weekly

In this consistently gripping work, the American-born Sasson (The Rape of Kuwait) recounts the life story of a Saudi princess she met while living in Saudi Arabia. The pseudonymous Sultana is a niece of King Faisal. Her father had four wives and a palace for each of them. Her older sister was circumcised before a "modern" doctor intervened on behalf of Sultana and her eight other sisters; their father treated all 10 as breeding animals, useless until old enough to be married off and to produce sons for their husbands. One sister, wed to a 62-year-old sexual sadist, attempted suicide. Sultana, the family's rebel, had the luck to marry a man who valued her spirit and intelligence. Yet when, after bearing five children, she could bear no more, he prepared to take another wife; Sultana fought this, as she had fought every other injustice and indignity her culture inflicted on her. In Sasson's telling, Sultana's story is a fast-paced, enthralling drama, rich in detail about the daily lives of the Saudi royals and packed with vivid personal sketches of the ruling clan and sharp opinions about the sexual mores, politics, religion and culture of this still-feudal nation. An appalling glimpse of the conditions endured by even such privileged women as the attractive, well-born Sultana. Photos not seen by PW . First serial to Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild alternate; author tour. ( Sept. )

Library Journal

One must keep in mind the context of time and place when reading this emotional and exciting book to alleviate some of the horror of the injustices endured by the women described here. Equality of men and women has not worked out in any society, but the status of women in Islam is more problematic in that canon law is applied according to the social climate. Consequently, countries influenced by the West, such as Egypt, are more relaxed than countries like Saudi Arabia that are ruled by strict Hanbali law, which subjects women to unwelcome marriages, execution at whim, and the boredom of purdah . In this book, Sasson ( The Rape of Kuwait , Knightsbridge Pub. Co., 1991) tells the fascinating story of ``Sultana,'' an unidentified Saudi princess who yearns for recognition in her own right, not as an adjunct of men. For those who wish to know more, Soraya Altorki's Women in Saudi Arabia ( LJ 1/86) and Paryeen Shaukat Ali's Status of Women in the Muslim World (Aziz Pub., 1975. o.p.) are good. Recommended for popular collections. (Illustrations not seen.) Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/92.-- Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida Libs., Gainesville

What People Are Saying

Louise Leonard
Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida Libs., Gainesville
One must keep in mind the context of time and place when reading this emotional and exciting book to alleviate some of the horror of the injustices endured by the women described here. Equality of men and women has not worked out in any society, but the status of women in Islam is more problematic in that canon law is applied according to the social climate. Consequently, countries influenced by the West, such as Egypt, are more relaxed than countries like Saudi Arabia that are ruled by strict Hanbali law, which subjects women to unwelcome marriages, execution at whim, and the boredom of purdah.

In this book, Sasson ( The Rape of Kuwait , Knightsbridge Pub. Co., 1991) tells the fascinating story of ``Sultana,'' an unidentified Saudi princess who yearns for recognition in her own right, not as an adjunct of men. For those who wish to know more, Soraya Altorki's Women in Saudi Arabia ( LJ 1/86) and Paryeen Shaukat Ali's Status of Women in the Muslim World (Aziz Pub., 1975. o.p.) are good.

Betty Mahmoody
Heart-wrenching…the issues addressed by this admirably courageous woman stay with the reader long after the story is finished.
—(Betty Mahmoody, author of Not Without My Daughter)

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