Girls of Riyadh

Author: Rajaa Alsanea

Rating: 3.5/ 5

Sex and the city goes Middle East. This is the essence of Girls of Riyadh. Chicklits are bound to be cheeky and fun, they break conventions in the most conventional way. The taboos and women are exemplary, mocking as well as questioning the society. But this one is more daring than usual. It breaks into a space which is never talked about. The rights of a woman in a world for men. Where women are nothing but extension of men with no individuality what so ever. 

Girls of Riyadh was an awakening. The things I take for granted are privileges elsewhere. What's basic becomes luxury and luxury becomes basic in a world upside down. These women have voices and feelings. They demand love, respect and trust. They demand too much in a mans world. I only believe if a man is worth it he will make sure his woman is worth it. 

It's a story about four friends each trying to find love and life in a mans world. Misinterpreted, misunderstood, judged and subjected to rules and norms of a society refusing to allow space. It's clearly not Sex and the city but it's women in a city which continues to live in an era which has long gone. 

Snippets from a different world - 

If left unattended, woman is to man as butter is to sun. 

Women don't pretty themselves up for men: they do it to get back at other women. 

Is there ab inverse relationship between one's social and economic status on one hand and good humor and personality on the other? In the way that some people believe in the existence of an invariable relationship between being fat and being funny? 

It is so easy to forget happy people.

Lying in bed on he side, she would extend her right leg full length for her to collide with Rashid but it would not!

If you aren't up to lovin', don't do it! - Mahmoud Al-Malegi

Sunset is explained as - the sun biscuit dipped into the cup of sea!

Don't wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to her bitter reality. - Mark Twain

Men don't necessarily love the ones they respect and women respect only the ones they love! 

Take the one who loves you not the one you love! 

Those who want us, our souls resent them

And those whom we want, fate refuses to give to us.

- Norah al hawshan