AustLit

'Like the biblical story of Christ’s birth, Geraldine Brooks’ Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women begins with a woman refused a room at an inn. In Brooks’ tale, the ‘inn’ is a modern hotel in the Saudi Arabian city of Dhahran in the early 1990s, where the Australian journalist is on assignment for the Wall Street Journal. She is refused a room not because she is pregnant – she isn’t – nor because the hotel is fully booked; rather, it is contrary to the laws of the desert kingdom for a woman to travel without her husband. Only a prostitute would do so, as the male receptionist implies. When the affronted traveller tries to bed down on a sofa behind a plant in the lobby, the police are called.' (Introduction)