Readers Write about Harem Girl
What some readers of Harem Girl have said:
A fascinating sexy harem story. Both warm and disturbing.,
July 14, 2004. Reviewer from Canada.
I enjoyed this book as much for its superb story line as for its total
believability. Too often sheik/harem books are premised on unlikely far fetched
events such as time travel or set on some unbelievable planet somewhere else
in the universe sometime in the future. Not this harem story, however. I felt
I was reading a true account of life in an Arabian harem in the early 1900's.
Mariyah the main character starts her adventure as a fourteen years old girl
living in Tunisia and ends it in Arabia when she is forty. In the intervening
years she is married, enters the harem of an Arab sheik as his slave Sapphira,
falls in love and marries again. Therein lies a small but integral part of the
plot-only she knows that she is already married to another man - until her deceit
is discovered. How and why, as a married woman, she enters the harem of a sheik
as a slave is an intriguing and cleverly woven story in itself, and what follows
afterwards is both warm and harrowing. Expect to shed a tear or two. I bought
this book as a present for my wife. It was well received - as were the thanks
the book inspired!
Curl
up with this one. A lovely read
Joanne Hemming Dec 11 2005
I was at first concerned
about the subject matter and whether the author had fallen into the common
trap of telling an erotic story for its eroticism only not the story. But not
in this novel. Saalih has done a masterful job of writing tastefully about
what is inevitably a very sexy subject - life in an Arabian harem - and I have
no compunction whatsoever in wholeheartedly recommending this book. Read it
with someone you want to undress!
Akhalor,
September 9th, 2005
I've read two slave girl books put out by IUniverse in the past year (M.
Saalih's Harem Girl and Karen Mitchell's The
Usahar)
and both were excellent.
Jim
Williams, April 24th, 2005
Purchased the e-book yesterday.
One of the best harem stories I have
ever read.
An
Interesting Exercise in Orientalism, September 7, 2004
Book Summary by: Chris O'Malley (New York, NY United States)
"Harem
Girl," complete with an eye-catching cover of an imaginary Arab
slave market by Jean-Leon Gerome, gives us an interesting example of
Orientalism. It purports to be the diary of one Mariyah/Sapphira, a
disenchanted Muslim wife who concocts a plan to spend time in an Arabian
slave harem, in which she becomes trapped and falls in love with her
master. The story, of course, is first and foremost a way to describe
life in the harem as a backdrop to a slave girl fantasy, with an emphasis
on its sensual and sexual aspects. These are discussed in great detail,
showing us that the author was diligent about her research. The writing
is generally good as well, and the clever Forward and use of Arabic
letters at the beginnings of the two main sections of the book are
nice touches.
Read all of O'Mally's full review at Amazon.com
Historical Fiction--but a fine bit of fiction,
July 2, 2006
Alan D, Crawford (Carson City, NV USA)
Harem Girl is historical fiction. The author took pains to get
the details right, but the word "harem" stems from the Arabic
word "forbidden" and many of the details remain forgotten secrets.
It isn't as if there was an official harem manual that the harem owners
followed--the man who owned a harem was rich and politically powerful enough
to do as he pleased with little hindrance from the law. In many cases,
the harem's owner WAS the law! Slavery was officially outlawed in Saudi
Arabia during the 1960's, finally, but unofficially harem slaves are still
rumored to exist throughout the world.
I have no way of verifying what is fact and what is fiction in Harem Girl, so
I enjoyed it as fiction. Anti-slavery activists and feminists won't read this
book, which is a pity--they'd learn something that could help their cause of
equality for women...
Shamir S. November 2006 - California
I am an Iranian Assyrian wife. My grandmother was a circassian
slave girl who was abducted by Kurds on her wedding day and taken to Tabriz
where she was stripped naked and sold to a minor Persian nobleman, an older
man with five wives. He raped and sodomized her on the way to Kermenshal.
On the way he branded her with his sign. Six months later my grandfather
found her and took her away by force...
Bill Eames - New Zealand
Fantastic book... It is a prized
book of mine and very arousing.
A great sequel story could be written
about the slaves, including european, who were captured off the Southern
coast of Saudi Arabia & Yemen. Many were sold into the households
of modest merchants and traders and their surroundings were not exotic
like Ali's . Those who appeared attractive were used sexually on
a frequent and varied basis. This information has been handed down
through my family following the capture of one of my grandmother's
great aunts circa 1835 on her way to join her army family in India.
She later was able to return to UK where she was treated with great
embarrassment by the wider family (and great interest by the males).
I found the tidbits my Grandmother told me very arousing too!
The book HAREM GIRL is widely available either as a trade paperback or as an ebook. Be daring! Buy a copy at Where to buy
