A great read!

Sometimes - rarely! -  reading can be just as good as travelling. As we were forced to stay home during the Eid holiday, my only salvation was reading!

Girls of Riyadh - Rajaa Alsanea

This book was such a good pick I wanted to share it with you. Described as the Arabian "Sex and the City", it's just a must-read if you want - and who doesn't? - to get to know the young Saudi girls, their dreams, their conception of love, of friendship, of happiness. As they fall in love, get engaged, get married, get divorced, fight against their families, their friends, and try to find their place in a conservative society, you'll find yourself thinking they're not unlike your own friends.


What about love in Saudi Arabia? The last paragraph of the book sums it up very nicely:

"As for love, it still might always struggle to come out into the light of day in Saudi Arabia. You can sense that in the sighs of bored men sitting alone at cafés, in the shining eyes of veiled women walking down the streets, in the phone lines that spring to life after midnight, and in the heartbroken songs and poems, too numerous to count, written by the victims of love unsanctioned by family, by tradition, by the city: Riyadh."