Girls of Riyadh – Rajaa’ Abdullah Al Sanea
Girls of Riyadh (بنات الرياض) is an Arabic novel written by a young Saudi female author about four girls living in the capital of Saudi and their attempts to find love in there. I thought that the book was very real and I believe that there are people who live the lifestyle and stories told in this book. I loved the narration style, the use use classical Arabic for the narration and the use of Arabic accents and dialects for the characters dialogue. The book is so funny at times and so sad and depressing at other times.
There is an English translated copy of the book, I’m not sure if it is as good as the Arabic one (which I read), especially as I personally liked the writing style more than anything else in the book.
I found it interesting how each chapter would start with a quote or a short poem to tell something. Some chapters had like a whole one page poem by Nizar Qabani, there were nice and they perfectly matched the story, but I really think that quoting a whole poem by someone like Nizar Qabani is copyright infringement cause he only recently died and copying the whole poem is not fair use. On the other hand, even though copyright captures this act, it is one of these instances where the law should probably be changed to allow other people to “remix” and create transformative works that create something interesting such as Girls of Riyadh.
This was the second Arabic book I read in probably the last seven years. I really loved it! If you are looking for a quick Arabic read make sure you check this book out.
Urgh, if only we had something as fun as this to read about Omani culture.
