Women of Sand and Myrrh
Condition: SECONDHAND
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'Hanan al-Shaykh lays bare the perverted relations which necessarily exist in a state which denies women their humanity, and does so in a lyrical feeling language whose impact is all the greater for its lack of polemic.'
Hanan al-Shaykh's work has been likened to that of Margaret Atwood and Margaret Drabble, yet hers is a voice which is unique not only in the Arab world, but in world literature.
With consumate story-telling skill, al-Shaykh explores the lives of four women living in an unnamed Arab desert society. There is Suha, fleeing from Lebanon and unused to the restrictions of secluded Arab life: Suzanne, an American woman who experiences herself anew through the desires of the local men; Tamr, a spirited desert woman and a student of Suha; Nur, also a local woman but a rich corrupt one whose restless energy pushes her to consume people as carelessly as she covets things.
Al-Shaykh affirms through her story-telling the extraordinary power of fiction. The diverse effects of extreme male rule on the lives of these women emerge - through al-Shaykh's confident, exquisite writing - as more real and more complex than a thousand reports from a region that has become the major focus of world attention.
Author: Hanan Al-Shaykh
Format: Paperback, 288 pages, 130mm x 195mm
Published: 1994, Allen & Unwin, Australia
Genre: General & Literary Fiction
'Hanan al-Shaykh lays bare the perverted relations which necessarily exist in a state which denies women their humanity, and does so in a lyrical feeling language whose impact is all the greater for its lack of polemic.'
Hanan al-Shaykh's work has been likened to that of Margaret Atwood and Margaret Drabble, yet hers is a voice which is unique not only in the Arab world, but in world literature.
With consumate story-telling skill, al-Shaykh explores the lives of four women living in an unnamed Arab desert society. There is Suha, fleeing from Lebanon and unused to the restrictions of secluded Arab life: Suzanne, an American woman who experiences herself anew through the desires of the local men; Tamr, a spirited desert woman and a student of Suha; Nur, also a local woman but a rich corrupt one whose restless energy pushes her to consume people as carelessly as she covets things.
Al-Shaykh affirms through her story-telling the extraordinary power of fiction. The diverse effects of extreme male rule on the lives of these women emerge - through al-Shaykh's confident, exquisite writing - as more real and more complex than a thousand reports from a region that has become the major focus of world attention.