An urban history of Jeddah from the late Ottoman period to the present day, seen through its diverse and changing population.

Describes the activities of Mohamed Said Farsi from 1972 to 1986 as city planner and later mayor of Jeddah to turn Jeddah into an open air art museum.

I grew up a Roman Catholic. Sent to a Catholic school, I received good education. In those days, when you passed certain tests, you were allowed to enter first grade very early. I graduated from grade school at eleven years old. Then I was on a Catholic high school, graduating at the age of sixteen years. I skipped a grade in grade school. My mother belonged to a Catholic organization, and our family took in foreign students to live with us. Thus, I am very eager to learn foreign cultures. When my husband had the chance to live and work in Saudi Arabia, we jumped at it.

Osama bin Laden's former sister-in-law provides a penetrating, unusually intimate look into Saudi society and the bin Laden family's role within it, as well as the treatment of Saudi women. On September 11th, 2001, Carmen bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her ex-brother-in-law was involved in these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her family would never be the same again. Carmen bin Ladin, half Swiss and half Persian, married into and later divorced from the bin Laden family and found herself inside a complex and vast clan, part of a society that she neither knew nor understood. Her story takes us inside the bin Laden family and one of the most powerful, secretive, and repressed kingdoms in the world.

A taut and terrifying trip into a distorting mirror--a novel as tense, immediate, and chilling as the world it depicts. "A Middle Eastern Turn of the Screw with an insidious power to grip."-Time Out