Hali

I cant give it a full five stars, even if I feel compelled to do so. Critique sandwich:

The Good: Honestly a GREAT book. A journalistic venture by a woman into the world of women in Islamic Arabic-speaking countries written with a lot of empathy and the perfect mix between personal experience and explanation of facts. It holds a lot of knowledge on the Happenings of the 80s, having mostly been written during them, and contains references to events we can nowadays barely find traces of online, even if they were really important to the people and especially women at the time. There's so many little nice parts about the book I'd write a whole essay if I listed them all :P

The Bad: I REALLy, really appreciated a lot of the context and background knowledge the author gave. That's exactly why (as both a major in arab & islamic studies and a big leftie) I have to point out that some of her context is a bit... off. It doesnt reek of atheism, and overall, the author has a really good understanding of Islam and especially the people she met following it. I also dont know exactly HOW prevalent some discourses were at the time she wrote this book, considering a lot of the countries she visited didnt allow for a difference in opinion on Islamic matters. But some of the religious context she gives is a little short-handed, I think? Like e.g. for sure introducing Aisha as the Prophet's 6 year old wife, when thats a topic thats been pretty widely debated. She remarked at another point that a historic reading of the Koran wont change the opinion and power of people reading it literally, she couldve done it here too to illustrate how these stories have a real effect despite Aisha's age likely having been exaggerated. You will find other reviews that point out inconsistencies or issue regarding this too.

The Good, again: The author doesnt hold back on criticism and it feels so much more meaningful than when other people who have had no contact with Islamic culture and countries level the same criticisms at people because she says these things not out of hate, but out of a sense of justice. Her book ends with an anecdote about living in a place where women can choose whether to closely follow Islamic teachings or not and respecting each other. It's pretty damn beautiful.

It's somewhere between greatly written and embarrassingly out of touch. The main character Anna mentions multiple times how she is bothered by Will's competitiveness because she is a single mother of two and she can't lose her job and the flexibility it brings, but her disliking him is later on framed mainly as her being competitive as well and her being worried about her position thanks to him snatching up chances is dropped. Will has his own good reasons for wanting those, dont get me wrong! But this is never spoken about, in conversations, Annas dislike of Will is reduced to him being competitive and annoying. I think this is what bothered me the most about the book. As soon as this was forgotten, the book (regrettably) became a lot more fun.

You can really feel the tension between Anna and Will and even with "fade to black" sex scenes, the book is sexy. Their flirting in well-written and they have chemistry. The characters – aside from Anna, sadly – are given a lot of respect and fleshed out like crazy, too. It's honestly great.

Not the worst but two more things that bothered me:

• the author managed to write autistic weirdos multiple times (sometimes in a good, sometimes in a bad light, although the way the first one was written is a bit too close for comfort to an actual ableist depiction of autistic people for me)
• the author is... out of touch... but tries to be in touch... the mid-20 year olds are not bonding over Roblox and the kids are not calling each other default, usually

Tldr: There's some glaring issues but I still had a lot of fun reading this book thanks to how well-written the rest of the book is.

ganz süß & voller Quellenangaben & hatte schöne Zwischentexte und Aussagen. Dafür sind die Formulierungen manchmal verwirrend und das Buch, an sich, ist jetzt nicht das besonderste... insb. weil es veraltet ist (und das ziemlich schnell). TBF ist es genau deswegen aber auch interessant, ist mal ein kleiner Anblick ins Deutschland von 2015. Wäre es nicht in meinem Buch-Abo, hätt ich's nicht gelesen/gekauft.

Aufgerundet auf 5 Sterne, da ich mir nach dem Lesen der eBook-Version überlege, das Buch nochmal in Papierform zu holen. So viel Spaß hat das Lesen mir gemacht :) Der Autor ist sehr respektvoll und bringt alle Themen auch für Nicht-Kenner gut rüber.

I finished this in basically one sitting from 8pm to 3am and am on the verge of sleep while typing this. my verdict: so fun, so great, so hopeful, very consistent and logical, loved it. gut feeling says 4 stars because some passages kinda annoyed me and this book didnt change my life or anything but I often round those up to 5 stars for books anyways because "changed my life" is an egregiously high standard to have

So cool and great. I think a lot of us rationally know that progressives have existed in any human era but actually reading a book from 1955 that's eerily relevant to 2026 is something else. Us humans in 2026 havent lived through some kind of nuclear disaster, yet we face very many of the same (almost exact) struggles as the people in this book: The USA, too, currently struggles with a surge in evangelical pastors and supposed believers spreading the gospel that demonize anybody who is different. The strength of the USA means that this thinking gets imported everywhere else, too. Rural communities have and still suffer from many a plight that may drive them towards conservatism, too. And those are just some examples.

This book reads like it was written by a person that is very empathetic and can thoroughly take on other people's points of view. There is an obvious moral and opinion presented in this book, yes, but differing opinions or characters aren't just explained away as stupid; they're fleshed out and have internally consistent or simply realistic viewpoints. It's great to read many subtle critiques out of this text, too.

The ending was a bit sudden and underwhelming. Didn't ruin the fun of reading the book for me though. All in all, it certainly isnt the BEST book ever written, but it's one of the books I will recommend to EVERYBODY.