Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women

Geraldine Brooks

Aug 2012 · Bolinda · Narrated by Geraldine Brooks

About this audiobook

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women is the story of Brooks’ intrepid journey toward an understanding of the women behind the veils, and of the often contradictory political, religious, and cultural forces that shape their lives. In fundamentalist Iran, Brooks finagles an invitation to tea with the ayatollah’s widow - and discovers that Mrs. Khomeini dyes her hair. In Saudi Arabia, she eludes the severe segregation of the sexes and attends a bacchanal, laying bare the hypocrisy of this austere, male-dominated society. In war-torn Ethiopia, she watches as a female gynecologist repairs women who have undergone genital mutilation justified by a distorted interpretation of Islam. In villages and capitals throughout the Middle East, she finds that a feminism of sorts has flowered under the forbidding shroud of the chador as she makes other startling discoveries that defy our stereotypes about the Muslim world. Nine Parts of Desire is much more than a captivating work of firsthand reportage; it is also an acute analysis of the world’s fastest-growing religion, deftly illustrating how Islam’s holiest texts have been misused to justify the repression of women. It was, after all, the Shiite leader Ali who proclaimed that “God created sexual desire in ten parts, then gave nine parts to women.”

About the author

Geraldine Brooks is the Australian-born author of the bestselling novels People of the Book, Year of Wonders and March, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. She is also the author of the acclaimed non-fiction work Nine Parts of Desire. A graduate of Sydney University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Brooks was a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in Bosnia, Somalia and the Middle East. In 2010 she won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award. Geraldine lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the author Tony Horwitz, and their son.