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Women of Sand and Myrrh

Hanan Al-Shaykh,

حنان الشيخ,

Catherine Cobham (Translator)

3.23 · Rating details · 1,076 ratings · 147 reviews

A powerful and moving novel, by the Arab world's leading woman novelist, about four women coping with the insular, oppressive society of an unnamed desert state. ...more

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Paperback, 288 pages

Published July 1st 1992 by Anchor (first published 1982)

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· 1,076 ratings · 147 reviews

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Jul 27, 2014 Aubrey rated it really liked it

Shelves: reality-check, translated, person-of-reality, person-of-translated, person-of-reality-translated, antidote-translated, arabic, queer-as-in, 500-wm, 4-star

The first time he asked how to say 'good morning' in English and American and found they were the same, he exclaimed in surprise, 'Praise the Lord! They're the same as each other inside and out!'

Whenever I see a book by a woman of color with a super low rating and/or reviews littered all over with a variation on the theme of "didn't like the characters = main reason for not liking the book", I sigh and crack my fingers and pull on my gloves. More often than not this "didn't like the characters" business translates to "didn't understand the book", and since the author's neither white nor male she doesn't get the benefit of the doubt of "oh I didn't understand so the fault must be with me and the book will still get a shiny high rating", bending the sentiment of Catholic guilt into such an impressive cross-categorization of peer-pressured faith that it's as much a marvel as it is a goddamn annoyance. Seriously, though. What's not to like about the characters? What could possibly sideline that unspoken taboo of not shitting on a book cause the main character's a rapist/murderer/pedophile/accomplice of genocide/midlife crisis white boy with a penchant for boundary violation and really pitiful attempts at philosophy? You tell me.

The front cover says The Handmaid's Tale, which is associative in one sense and really insulting in a more important other. A review on this site compares this to Woolf, which I have to thank both for my moment of "Aha!" and the resulting fruitful pursuit. See, the narrative viewpoint in this is super super close first person that switches enough to keep one on one's claustrophobic toes, sidewinding through each character in such a way that jostles complicatedly enough against sociopolitical anathema for extremely complex discussion. I'm probably forgetting some main academic tenet or another, but a great deal of Modernism in the likes of Loy and co. felt akin to that same breed: solipsistic yet glancing, covert yet nakedly revealing, plotless yet so entrenched in the train of one at a time self-reflecting minds that it's nigh impossible to look away. Add in the "unnamed desert state" (most likely Saudi Arabia), characters that have no time for pandering to reader's views of "nice" when there's flesh and blood to live out, and a culture clash that the further one gets one will begin to make sense of whether they like it or not, and you get this modern psychological thing that's about as centered around feminism as The Golden Notebook.

I originally started reading this so as to counterbalance the happy-go-lucky archetypes that show up without fail in nearly every one of the The Arabian Nights. There's some of that, as well masculine romanticism succumbing to the late 20th century realities of STDs, sexual awakenings of the queer variety counterbalanced with mental stagnancy to the extreme, whatever the -phile term is for the Middle East when it comes to white US women escaping their issues with suburbia, and some really strong overtones of Rebecca in the last parts. Not the unnamed second wife, mind you. The one who wouldn't play by the rules and, here in this novel, is hellbent on staying alive and kicking for however long it takes to get what she wants. Dislike the first person pov characters all you like, but I can easily imagine all of them skateboarding in a burqa towards their intended destination. One of them may come to this conclusion by the tenets of Islam, another by memories of the land of Tony Hawk, but it's not as simple as an "Arab woman surmounts oppression" headline. It never is, of course, but this really drives it home.

I wonder if some readers didn't like this cause they've nursed fantasies of what it would be like to be female and obscenely rich in the land the pages of this book describe. Or maybe they expected a single tone of stoic endurance or Oriental escapade instead of bits of humor and pieces of overwhelming horror and a psychological immersion that never ever quits. Ah well. Whatever the case, this is very much a "modern" novel, where the Itches That Must Not Be Scratched are scratched, the results of said scratching are recoiled from in favor of social conformation, and the scratcher lives long enough to repeat ad nauseam. Thank god for politics and the Internet, amiright?

I pictured myself sitting in front of the television explaining to Batul and my aunt and my mother what was really going on in the foreign films: the woman whom Mr Rochester kept shut away in Jane Eyre was his mad wife, not his mother.

...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Rusalka rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: around-the-world, migrants-diaspora-other, original-52-books-around-the-world, own, middle-east, ylto-topplers, ylto-alphabet, translation

It took me a while to pin down my feelings for this book. It raises so many, it was really hard to wade through them all and work out what I thought of the book as a whole.

The book is 4 intertwining stories about 4 different women within a very strict, restrictive Islamic society within the Middle East. The best I can find is Saudi Arabia is probably the closest with these restrictions. I loved that this was from the women's perspective which gave us an insight into a world half of us would neve It took me a while to pin down my feelings for this book. It raises so many, it was really hard to wade through them all and work out what I thought of the book as a whole.

The book is 4 intertwining stories about 4 different women within a very strict, restrictive Islamic society within the Middle East. The best I can find is Saudi Arabia is probably the closest with these restrictions. I loved that this was from the women's perspective which gave us an insight into a world half of us would never see.

The book is split into 4 parts, each part with a different woman telling their story. The women pop up in other women's stories as they are all connected but your perspective is changing throughout the book. We have Suha from Lebanon who's husband has a contract in this country and they have moved there for him to work for a while. Tamr, who is the daughter of a sheikh and his concubine from Turkey, but is a native to this 'country' and a student of Suha's at the local womens' TAFE. Suzanne, an American housewife who again's husband has a contract in this country, yet she finds all men find her exotic and desirable in this country and never wants to leave. And Nur, who is incredibly spoiled by her very wealthy husband, but there is so much more to that relationship.

Some of these women I completely empathised with. Some I was appalled with. But I understood most of them. They were all products of this restrictive society. And it made me so glad that I could drive and go where I wanted, when I wanted, without a man, I can work, I can be educated, I can leave my house without a man I'm related or married to, I can wear what I like and so much more. It was one of those books that immersed you in were you were and I think that's really important, as so many of us write off these places. We don't think about them. We know about them but we don't think about them, as they make us angry and so it's easier not to. And we forget the women within them.

It's important to remember.

For more reviews visit http://rusalkii.blogspot.com.au/
...more

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May 01, 2018 Nissy rated it liked it · review of another edition

I cant believe they edited the English version of this book for marketing purposes, this is like when Arab translators edit Simon De Beauvoir books claiming its too hard for us to understand .
this rating is for the english version, the original book is 4.5 stars.

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Dec 21, 2020 Fanna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: translated, adult-fiction, literary-realistic-fiction-drama, middle-eastern-author, political-undertone, read-a-finished-version, set-in-middle-east, homeland, middle-eastern-mc, muslim-mc

The weight of a feminist story line is heavy but met with a great narration through four women from different socio-cultural backgrounds clawing against gender stereotypes, stigmas, and marital expectations. Much to what I was afraid of, the translation does paint it in a saviour light but if an attempt is made to search for the underlying meanings of being a woman, especially in the regions hinted at, it works as an important read.

↣ on my tbr for reading in translation readathon ↢

...more

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Jan 18, 2017 Sookie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, translated

The lives of four women intertwine in this unknown desert state somewhere in the middle-east. The author's colloquial use of language and metaphors gives the novel a post-modern feel. The author gives voices to four women from various socioeconomic classes. The issues addressed varies from what today's society would call archaic or pedantic; the contrasting nature of complexities the women face makes up the overarching arc. Understanding the clash of modernism and culture is these parts of the w ...more

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Mar 07, 2014 Rachel Estridge rated it really liked it

Many of the reviews, I believe, are unfair. The English translation was heavily edited. The name of the book, and therefore, the meaning of the story was altered. Even the order of the perspectives were swapped around! This definitely changed our idea of who was the protagonist and who's story we should really be following. If this book was read as it is told in its original form, we would have seen it as Al-Shaykh intended. This story is very important for Middle Eastern feminism, identity, and ...more

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Nov 21, 2012 Methodtomadness rated it liked it

So Women of Sand and Myrrh is a better book than most people are giving it credit for, albeit not a fantastic one. Read it more like a Middle Eastern Virginia Woolf novel, and it makes more sense. The news here is not that "hey, women living in unnamed generic Islamic countries can feel oppressed," but that Hanan Al-Shaykh, in 1980-something, was writing such a nuanced account of the very specific ways that female sexuality could be circumscribed and/or redirected in such a world. The internal f ...more

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Jan 16, 2020 Naori rated it it was ok

Shelves: arab-n-arab-american

I don’t know if I’m comfortable with the way this depicts women and hysteria. It is working well with tropes of isolation and displacement, but there still seems this very archaic model of women who are forced to remain in domestic spaces who just descend into alternate forms of madness, self directed trauma, hysteria, dramatic actions, etc. while the men are not only completely stable but almost become two dimensional background characters to this more predominant running narrative. Just a few ...more

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Jun 13, 2012 Amari rated it it was amazing

Spectacular. Al-Shaykh is a powerful writer and draws the reader very quickly into the world(s) of her unhappy, unfulfilled characters. The technique of dividing the novel into four sections, each in first person and narrated by a different character, made it feel more like a collection of connected short stories, especially because of interruptions and overlap in the sequence of events.

Al-Shaykh's group of four is extremely diverse in all the important ways. They share little more than a locati ...more

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Apr 08, 2017 Jordan rated it it was amazing

I would venture to say that this is now one of my favorite books. I enjoyed it because the characters were complex and their individual stories were interesting. Contrary to what others might think, this is not just the story of Middle Eastern women, but portrays a very woman experience in general. Though some of the same things may not currently occur in Western society, they once did.

I'm not great at writing reviews, but I just wanted to share that this book is not given enough credit. Read it ...more

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Jul 31, 2020 Carmen rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, middle-east, europe, translated, 2020-globetrotter, wow, asia, 2020-find-your-flight, 2020, july2020-list

The desert came into view, looking as it had done the first time I saw it: sand and palm trees, a way of life that revolved around human beings without possessions or skills, who had to rely on their imagination to contrive a way of making their hearts beat faster or even to keep them at a normal pace; to search unaides for a hidden gleam of light, and to live with two seasons a year instead of four.

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Apr 17, 2020 Byurakn rated it it was amazing

Loved this book. More coming soon.

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May 27, 2019 Tia Gonzales rated it liked it

revelatory, 4 women who live life 'behind the veil', so much boredom, so much pain, so must thwarted desire, so much pent-up emotion....found the book very sad. ...more

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Nov 10, 2015 Cecilia rated it really liked it

I liked it, though bits of it were not that interesting but the one where the spoiled princess chick is using uppers and downers to get through her day because life was that boring and at the end of the book , all that they could offer her to make her feel better was a stuff load of PUNK outfits and PUNK hairspray to color her hair ....well...that got me interested in PUNK and then I ended up doing some art gigs with the real PUNK people that inspired her allusions to the outfits in the book...s ...more

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Jan 24, 2008 Renee rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: people who like angsty "women's stories"

Good concept: poor execution.

Four disparate Middle Eastren women -- who know or know of each other -- tell their stories about women's lives in a fundamentalist male-dominated society. Each woman's story adds another POV to what's going on with all the other characters.

I thought it would be an interesting approach to first-person narrative. The idea, I assume, was to give the reader a view of each character from internal and external POVs. Unfortunately, the writer failed to deliver. The narra ...more

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Feb 27, 2020 Krista Morris rated it liked it

I read an article titled "Gender, Genre, and the (Missing) Gazelle: Arab Women Writers and the Politics of Translation," after I finished this book. This article was suggested by another Goodreads reviewer, and I really appreciate it.

While I rate the English translation 3 stars at most, I learned that significant changes were made from the Arabic, ranging from the title to order of the four narratives. After reading through the changes, I feel it is quite possible I would rate the original work ...more

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Oct 24, 2013 Rykia rated it it was amazing

Taking place in an unnamed desert state, Women of Sand and Myrrh takes the reader through the lives of four very different women who are in the desert - and seeking to escape from it - for differing reasons. There is Suha, the educated but chronically bored Lebanese exile; Tamr, the rebel who wants to learn and open her own business; Suzanne, the white American who is cheating on her husband with a violent man; and Nur, the wife and mother who is unhappy in both roles and seeks to cope with her ...more

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May 24, 2019 Friederike rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I read this novel for a literature class ("Literature in Translation") and learned about the changes the translator made to the original text, as well as how the book was "packaged" for the Western market (starting with the cover). This significantly changed the representation of Arab women's agency and empowerment (i.e. completely changing the original title "Misk al-Ghazal" = "The Gazelle's Musk", the re-ordering of the chapters, framing the story within Suha's narrative, while the original en ...more

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May 25, 2019 katie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 80s, women, fiction, middle-east, women-of-color, lgbt, feminism, challenge-read, atw-challenge

Amazing book. Written by a woman from Lebanon, set in an 'unnamed desert state', but since the author lived in Saudi Arabia for a while, it's pretty clear it's supposed to be set there. She does such an incredible job telling the story of women in Saudi Arabia from the perspective of several different women, a Lebanese refugee, an American expat, a daughter of a wealthy Saudi family, which shows that there isn't one single experience of women in oppressive Muslim societies. And how women can be ...more

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Apr 22, 2010 Zillah rated it it was ok

Shelves: middle-east, 2010, books-l-own, women-writers

l must admit l expected a lot more from this book, especially after reading reviews on the cover when l was buying it..
it's composed in an interesting way, divided into 4 parts, each telling a story of one woman, while all four are connected in some way..
the writing style didn't impress me one bit though, and sometimes l struggled with following the story since it jumps from past to present without giving a clear impression of the time.. ...more

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Jun 11, 2009 Heather rated it it was ok

Was disappointed. The author conveyed the clastrophobic atmosphere of being a woman in an Islamic country rather well but I just didn't like the characters. I understand how stunted their lives were and how that molded their personalities, but it went on and on and on. ...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Mary rated it liked it

Really intresting to read the thoughts and feelings as well as the daily life of what it may be like to live in a land so different from what we're used to, the story line was great and I really was invested in the women's lives. ...more

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Oct 28, 2008 Daryle rated it it was ok

Shelves: bookclub

I loved the idea of this book, but just couldn't get into it. I'm not sure if it was the writing style, translation, or story. A bit of a disappointment. ...more

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Mar 22, 2015 Nadia rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction-without-wizards

I went in expecting this to be messy (it was) but still found parts of it interesting in spite of it.

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Mar 08, 2019 Julie rated it it was amazing

I really enjoyed this book. A fascinating look into the lives of women in a part of the Middle East. Beautifully written, too!

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May 13, 2012 Rhoda rated it really liked it

An amazing view into a foreign world, sensitively translated

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Apr 18, 2020 Jelena Gley rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: göttingen

I have to admit I don't really like this book. Nevertheless it was an interesting read, and my 3-stars-rating refers only to the English edition "Women of Sand & Myrrh". Following the hints of other reviewers I'm currently reading the paper "Gender, Genre and the (Missing) Gazelle: Arab Women Writers and the Politics of Translation" (Michelle Hartman, 2012). I regret that I'm not able to speak or read Arabic, otherwise I could read the original Misk al-Ghazal, I'd be interested to see whether my ...more

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Nov 26, 2020 Desca Ang rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: hanan-al-shaykh, lebanese-writer

The review is taken from my Instagram account: @descanto

Meet four women who dare living in the desert in an unknown Arabic country. These four women have different way of living and reacting to the Arabic world they are living in.

Suha: an “Arabic” woman who is trapped in her own culture. She always wants to leave the desert but is tied to her dominating husband and son. She is suffocating and longs for a freedom.

Tamr: another Arabic woman who longs for a freedom. She wants to open her own store ...more

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Jul 25, 2020 Jessika Malo rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classic, women-s, fiction

Although I speak Arabic, the book that reached me was the English translation and I have to say that I enjoyed it immensely. Chances are if I do read it in Arabic, it is even better. But that is apart from the book, Al-Shaykh is a brilliant writer whose sincerity, values, and strong voice shine in any language. The descriptions of the lives of these women and their expectations of love, marriage, identity, men and their societies is very much what Arab women would use themselves. The fact that ...more

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Jul 04, 2017 Olivia Moffitt rated it really liked it

I do not really know how to describe this book. It can be a bit confusing as the book covers four different lives, and some or all of them intertwine at some point. I do not know how women from Middle Eastern countries view the book, but it seemed to be very accurate to the experiences I have both heard and observed. But, all of the women's lives have heavy burdens in some ways, and a few rather gruesome descriptions of a few events. The major point I took away from it all was that it is hard to ...more

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About Hanan Al-Shaykh

Hanan Al-Shaykh

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Hanan Al-Shaykh (Arabic: حنان الشيخ) is a Lebanese journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and playwright.
Al-Shaykh was born into a conservative Shia' Muslim family. She received her primary education in Beirut, and later she attended the American College for Girls in Cairo.
Al-Shaykh began her journalism career in Egypt before returning to Lebanon. She has also lived in Saudi Arabia and is curr ...more