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If you like Jean Sasson’s Princess

True stories about women surviving in various different cultures.

Africa ~ Asia ~ Afghanistan/Pakistan ~ Middle East ~ Others

Africa

Mernissi, Fatima. The harem within: tales of a Moroccan girlhood

In a story as exotic as anything found in the The thousand and one nights, Mernissi weaves an evocative tale of her childhood in a Fez harem in the 1940s, a period of social transition in Morocco.

Dirie, Waris. Desert flower: the extraordinary life of a desert nomad

Fashion model and UN ambassador Waris Dirie was born into a traditional family of tribal desert nomads in Somalia and tells the story of her escape from this life.

Dirie, Waris. Desert dawn

Here Waris Dirie traces the roots of her courage, resilience and humour back to her motherland and her mother.

Sicard, Grace Mesopirr. A tale of a Maasai girl

Providing many details of the rich cultural heritage of the Maasai, Sicard tells the story of Naini’s unhappy childhood and marriage at thirteen to a husband who beat her.

Oufkir, Malika. La prisonniere

Also published as Stolen lives: twenty years in a desert jail, this is the shocking true story of a Moroccan girl who was locked away in an isolated gaol by King Hassan II after her father was implicated in an assassination attempt.

Iman. I am Iman

Somalian model Iman’s book is "an entertaining hybrid essay on the cultural cum-political power of good looks."

Forna, Aminatta. The devil that danced on water: a daughter’s memoir of her father, her family, her country and a continent

This is an autobiographical account of a childhood encompassing racial intolerance in 1960s Scotland and political upheaval in Sierra Leone.

Benson, Heather. A dissolving dream: a New Zealander in Amin’s Uganda

Heather Benson’s remarkable account of her years in Idi Amin’s Uganda is the story of a marriage under pressure and a country in crisis.

Mathabane, Miriam. Miriam’s song: a memoir

The gripping tale of a woman born into poverty and apartheid.

Asia

Chai, May-Lee. The girl from Purple Mountain: love, honor, war, and one family’s journey from China to America

A first-born son and his daughter reconstruct his mother's extraordinary life. She was one of the first women admitted into a Chinese university during an era when most Chinese women were illiterate.

Iwasaki, Mineko. Geisha, a life

Celebrated as the most successful geisha of her generation, Mineko Iwasaki was only five years old when she left her parents’ home for the world of the geisha.

Karko, Kate. Namma: a Tibetan love story

Kate Karko left her job on a magazine for life in a tent in Tibet with her Tibetan husband Tsedup. A book about an exchange of cultures, Namma is also a travel book and a love story.

Mah, Adeline Yen. Falling leaves return to their roots: the true story of an unwanted Chinese daughter

Born into an affluent Shanghai family, Adeline suffered terrible emotional abuse, treated as a second-class citizen by her step-family.

Xinran. The good women of China: hidden voices

These stories reveal what it means to be a woman in today’s China, telling of terrible suffering, as well as love, in the face of cruelty and politics.

Afghanistan / Pakistan / Bangladesh

Deen, Hanifa. Broken bangles

With humour, compassion and insight, Hanifa Deen relates stories of Muslim women’s fight against oppression.

Durrani, Tehmina. My feudal lord

Extremely controversial when published in Pakistan, Tehmina’s story provides extraordinary insights into the vulnerable position of women caught in the complex web of Muslim society.

Latifa. My forbidden face: growing up under the Taliban: a young woman’s story

A poignant first-hand account of life for a young, educated, middle-class Afghani woman under the Taliban.

Nasrin, Taslima. Meyebeli: my Bengali girlhood

An exiled Bengali dissident and former women’s newspaper columnist traces her Muslim childhood in conflict-stricken Bangladesh.

Rodriguez, Deborah. The Kabul Beauty School

Riveting from the start, Rodriguez tells of her quest to help women in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, the best way she knows how: by opening a beauty school. Tells her story, and those of the women she came to know.

Yasgur, Batya Swift. Behind the burqa: our life in Afghanistan and how we escaped to freedom

This is the story of two cousins who fled Afghanistan twenty years apart, the older excaping the Communists and the younger the Taliban.

Zoya. Zoya’s story: an Afghan woman’s struggle for freedom

This book follows the experiences of a 23 year-old who witnessed the rise of the Taliban and who risked her life on missions to challenge state edicts against women in her country.

Middle East

Ali, Miriam. Without mercy: a woman’s struggle against modern slavery

Companion to her daughter’s story, Sold, Without mercy is a mother’s story of her battle against an abusive man, an outmoded tradition and an indifferent bureaucracy.

Drouart, Michèle. Into the wadi

The compelling and intensely personal story of an Australian woman and the Jordanian family into which she marries.

Mahmoody, Betty. Not without my daughter

When Betty Mahmoody went to Iran to meet her husband’s family, she soon decided the country where women were treated as chattels was not for her. Unfortunately her husband had other plans for their daughter, and Betty had to arrange an escape for them both from this increasingly tyrannical and violent man.

Mosteshar, Cherry. Unveiled: love and death among the Ayatollahs

Foreign journalist and Islamic bride, Cherry Mosteshar describes the demeaning treatment of women in Iran through her own struggles with a very traditional, domineering husband.

Muhsen, Zana. Sold: a story of modern-day slavery, A promise to Nadia

The true story of a British slave in the Yemen.

Sasson, Jean P. Princess: A true story of life behind the veil in Saudi Arabia

Sasson, Jean P. Daughters of Arabia / Princess Sultana’s daughters

The story of the princess’s two daughters, born into untold wealth but stifled by an unbearably restrictive lifestyle.

Sasson, Jean P. Princess Sultana’s circle also published as Desert royal

The forced marriage of her niece to a cruel older man makes the Princess Sultana more determined than ever to fight the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia.

Other

Halo, Thea. Not even my name

This biography is a rare eyewitness account of the genocide in which thousands of Armenian and Pontic Greek minorities in Turkey were killed during and after World War 1.

Fraser, Rosalie. Shadow child: a memoir of the stolen generation

Abused when taken from her family at the age of 2, Rosalie, an Aboriginal child, managed to escape and survive to write this inspiring autobiography.