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Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris
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Finding Nouf

by Zoe Ferraris

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Showing 1-5 of 21 (next | show all)
The combination of mystery & different culture was excellent reading for me. ( )
  RWFL | Jan 3, 2010 |
This book is called :The night of the Mi'raj", must be the title for Australian audiences. Learnt much about Saudi Arabian culture and the inequality of women that exits in this country. A story that got better as you read into it ( )
  camelliacorner | Dec 27, 2009 |
In Finding Nouf, a mystery set in Saudi Arabia, clues are either heavily veiled, buried, or shifting like sands in the wind…literally. Nouf ash-Shrawi, a 16-year-old young woman, disappears just days before her wedding. She has everything – a wealthy family, an upcoming wedding, her whole life ahead of her – she has no reason to run away, right? Her family, believing she may have been kidnapped, hires a desert guide, Nayir al-Sharqi, to find her. But Nayir doesn’t find her. Bedouins passing through the desert find her instead – and dead, an apparent drowning in a wadi (a gully or streambed found in the Middle East and Africa during the rainy season).

Nayir, a strict Muslim, is so upset he didn’t find Nouf before it was too late, that he feels compelled to find out what really happened to her. Not only did he fail Nouf, but he let down her family, especially his good friend Othman, Nouf’s brother. Nayir, frequently described as a holy Bedouin desert guide, is really Palestinian, living in Saudi Arabia, not a Bedouin but working as a desert guide and embracing the Bedouin culture, and living at the marina on a boat. The hulking, gentle, desert man with a love affair with the sea, where he finds “a curious replication of the sandy waste.” How’s that for being an outsider?

One of his first stops is the crime lab. There a lab technician named Katya Hijazi is also taking a strong interest in Nouf’s case and she and Nayir reluctantly join forces. Though pious Nayir is initially taken aback by what he perceives to be Katya’s brazen (and sinful) manners, Katya is his only hope for finding information about Nouf’s case from the heavily veiled and secret world of women. Add to that the seemingly minor detail that Katya is engaged to marry Othman. Nayir shouldn’t be the escort of his good friend’s fiancee; in fact, most of Nayir’s traditional ideas are put to the test as he works with Katya and learns more about Nouf.

Nouf is buried with her back facing Mecca – how could that be? This is one of many clues that lead Nayir and Katya into the Shrawi’s elegant home by the sea, and into the heart and dreams of Nouf and her siblings. This 2009 Alex Award Winner is a mystery, to be sure, but also a fascinating exploration into the mystery of gender relationships in Saudi Arabia
  yalib | Oct 18, 2009 |
really captivating until the end. HORRIBLE ENDING ( )
  mizcat | Oct 16, 2009 |
An intriguing look into the complex relationships between men and women in Saudi Arabia. Solving the mystery behind the death of a teenage girl in the desert hooked me as a reader, but watching the bond develop between Nayir and Katya (he's a conservative, Palestinian desert guide/sleuth; she has a PHD and works in the womens' section of the state examiner's office) kept me up all night. ( )
  Lillian3 | Oct 4, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 21 (next | show all)
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Marriage is my practice.
One who forsakes tis practice of mine is not from me.
- Muhammad
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Before the sun set that evening, Nayir filled his canteen, tucked a prayer rug beneath his arm, and climbed the south-facing dune near the camp.
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0618873880, Hardcover)

Zoë Ferraris’s electrifying debut of taut psychological suspense offers an unprecedented window into Saudi Arabia and the lives of men and women there. When sixteen-year-old Nouf goes missing, along with a truck and her favorite camel, her prominent family calls on Nayir al-Sharqi, a desert guide, to lead a search party. Ten days later, just as Nayir is about to give up in frustration, her body is discovered by anonymous desert travelers. But when the coroner’s office determines that Nouf died not of dehydration but from drowning, and her family seems suspiciously uninterested in getting at the truth, Nayir takes it upon himself to find out what really happened to her.
This mission will push gentle, hulking, pious Nayir, a Palestinian orphan raised by his bachelor uncle, to delve into the secret life of a rich, protected teenage girl -- in one of the most rigidly gender-segregated of Middle Eastern societies. Initially horrified at the idea of a woman bold enough to bare her face and to work in public, Nayir soon realizes that if he wants to gain access to the hidden world of women, he will have to join forces with Katya Hijazi, a lab worker at the coroner’s office. Their partnership challenges Nayir, bringing him face to face with his desire for female companionship and the limitations imposed by his beliefs. It also ultimately leads them both to surprising revelations. Fast-paced and utterly transporting, Finding Nouf offers an intimate glimpse inside a closed society and a riveting literary mystery.

(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:37:04 -0500)

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