Jean P. Sasson

Princess, as the book jacket says, is a privileged peek behind the walls of a sumptuous palace owned by a relative of the al-Sau'd family in Saudi Arabia. It takes us into a world of almost unbelievable wealth, but in this incredible richness is a world which I would not enter for a king's ransom.

I have been given glimpses throughout my life of societies where men are dominant, women inferior. I've even been in a couple of relationships of that sort, and thought myself hard done by. I cannot lessen the damage that certain men have meted out to me, but held against the horrors in Saudi Arabia it is like a single thorn in a prickly rose bush. Did you know that women could be stoned to death or drowned at a patriarch's whim? Or shut into a windowless dark room at the age of 22, and never be allowed out again, not until you die and they remove your body? Every day Saudi Arabian women risk death, punishment, brutality, and humiliation.

It is a land of child marriages, of men with several wives, where female children are a disappointment, where a woman can be cast off if she is barren or if she does not bear sons. It was in this kingdom that a Washington Post reporter just last year was chopped into bits with a chain saw while still alive. I am so glad tourists are not permitted into the Saudi kingdom, because I would hate to travel there.

For all that I found out appalling things while reading Princess, I didn't really enjoy the book. Part of that was the content, but part was because I found the woman describing these events annoying, for all that she does to help improve the situation of women in Saudi Arabia. Honestly, I'm not even sure why I wasn't enjoying the book, or at least reading it with interest. But I didn't.

An interesting book, I won't be reading the follow-up volumes.… (mehr)

En algunos países, las mujeres no cuentan; se limitan a padecer una existencia que incluye abusos y atropellos inimaginables: matrimonios a la fuerza, esclavitud sexual, ejecuciones crueles y sumarias. Esta es la historia verídica de una mujer nacida en la opulencia de la familia real de Arabia Saudí y que tuvo el valor de desafiar las normas y tradiciones que la obligaban a vivir en una jaula dorada. La princesa Sultana poseía cuatro mansiones en tres continentes, un jet privado y una incalculable fortuna. Pero no tenía libertad ni control sobre sus propios actos. Oculta tras su chador, era una prisionera, y los carceleros sus padres, su esposo, sus hijos.
Aun a riesgo de ser condenada a muerte, Sultana revela la terrible opresión padecida por las mujeres saudies de todas las extracciones sociales. Y lo hace con honestidad y detalle, describiendo su calvario personal y las arbitrarias circunstancias que lo han hecho posible… Testimonio real de una mujer de gran coraje, Sultana es un esclarecedor retrato de la dura realidad de la condición femenina en el mundo árabe.… (mehr)