
A Caravan of Brides: A Novel of Saudi Arabia
Arthur Clark
Kay Hardy Campbell
2017, Loon Cove Press, 9-780-99907-430-5, $14.99 pb.
Kay Hardy Campbell takes full advantage of her experiences as an Arabic-speaking journalist in Jiddah in the late 1970s and early ‘80s to tell a prescient story within a story about evolving Saudi society. Beginning in 1978, she provides an insider’s look at the kingdom through the eyes of a young Saudi just returned from college in Lebanon. While navigating wildly different cultural mores, and losing a sister in the takeover of the Sacred Mosque in Makkah in 1979, she meets an elderly “shepherdess” leading her flock along a quiet Jiddah byway. The woman describes her flight from a bad marriage in 1917 across the Nafud Desert in northern Arabia, finally leading a group of Armenian orphans to safety in a “Caravan of Brides.” Notably, the book—published before the decree giving women the right to drive in Saudi Arabia this year—concludes in 2019 with the heroine, now teaching girls at university, steering her car through Jiddah traffic.
You may also be interested in...
Umayyad Family Dynasty Creates Unprecedented Empire
Explore the development and history of the Umayyad Caliphate, one of the most consequential empires the world has ever known.Omani Author Zahran Alqasmi's Story About Life, Land and Honey
In his third novel, about a beekeeper living in Oman’s mountainous interior, local author Zahran Alqasmi grapples with a changing landscape around him.The Great British Bake Off Winner Nadiya Hussain Gathers Global Recipes in Culinary Celebration of Ramadan
Nadiya Hussain's diverse recipes highlight the global unity of Muslim cultures and cuisines.