This book provides an inside peek into a hidden world: four young women navigate the narrow straits between love, desire and Islamic tradition. Every week after Friday prayers, an email circulates among a group of subscribers to a vast online network. Over the course of a year, the realities of four university students from Riyadh's elite classes, Gamrah, Michelle, Sadeem and Lamees, are revealed. Living in a society with strict cultural traditions while Sex and the City, dating and sneaking around behind their parents backs consume their lives, these four young girls face numerous social, romantic, professional and sexual tribulations. Never-ending cultural conflicts underscore the difficulties of being an educated modern female growing up in the 21st century in a culture firmly rooted to an ancient way of life."Girls of Riyadh" presents a rare and unforgettable insight into the complicated lives of these young Saudi women, whose amazing stories are unfolding in a culture so very different from our own.

'A taboo-breaking, best-selling tale of sex and the city...in
Riyadh' Telegraph

`Brave and surprisingly informative' Guardian

`Highly readable...wonderfully vivid' New Statesman

Rajaa Alsanea grew up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the daughter of a family of doctors. She currently lives in Chicago where she is a dental graduate student. She is twenty-five years old and this is her first novel. Originally released in Arabic in 2005, Girls of Riyadh was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia due to controversial and inflammatory content. Black-market copies of the novel circulated and the daring originality of Girls of Riyadh continues to create a firestorm all over the Arab world and has been a bestseller across much of the Middle East.

2007-11-13 a waste!

The reason I gave this novel One star is because Amazon does not allow to rate it with a ZERO.

I am Arab, and am very open minded so I thought let me give this one a shot and see what is all this about, and I was so disappointed.

There is no clear structure or sound integrity.
It just focuses on some alleged life experiences (and some erotic fantasies) of some girls in middle Arabia; and seriously.. so what?
Why would readers spend money just to share some mild erotica or useless stories!

The language is poor to average, and the plot is very weak and in many places in the novel you would think: "where is this going to?"

The title is very misleading. Lots of people would buy this novel hoping to learn more about Arab culture or at least have an insight of how the life of Saudis or Arabs look like, and BOOM thy are hit with the reality this novel provids none of that.. just chit chat and fantasies..

It is not a piece of high class literature, and definitely not even good enough to be shared with your friend. Unless of course you plan to bore them to sleep.