The Girls of Riyadh

I was listening to WRNI last week, because I still have the hated Kia rental and it's about all that's worth listening to over the air, and they were interviewing the author of The Girls of Riyadh. Written by Rajaa Al Sanie, a 24 year old Saudi woman in a PG Endo (post graduate endodontic i.e. root canals) Program here in the US, it is a peek into the life of young women of the privledged class in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, something that no matter what I had read about in newspaper articles or heard from people who had visited Saudi Arabia (mostly military people so that source was always suspect since they couldn't know what goes on behind closed doors) I could not ever imagine. I graduated dental school with 3 girls from Iran who had come to the US to get their "undergraduate" dental degree and they sometimes talked about a girls life in Iran (this was 1984-88 a bit different I think than today) and much of what I read did sound familiar to how they were brought up. I found the book engrossing, well written and sad, perhaps because of the cultural differences and I applaud her conviction to "take the veil" off of the life of at least some women in Saudi. Since I mostly read sci-fi, fantasy and historical fiction this was an unusual pick for me but it's a great read.