A Goodreads user asked Jean Sasson:

I really enjoy your books however my one gripe is with the repetive cover images of a veiled woman, covered but her eyes showing. This look really perpetuates the steretype of the exostic/engimatic Middle Eastern temptress. Why do you have the same look plastered across msot of your books, it really undermines for me the integrity of your work ?

Jean Sasson Hi Hiba, Thanks for your question as this is important for readers to know. First of all, the four of the five PRINCESS books do have veiled women on the cover, but in fact, I never met but one Saudi woman who did not veil, although I know now that some Saudi women living in Jeddah do not veil, while women still veil in the rest of the country. And, most of the Saudi women I knew personally, did wear beautiful veils and their eyes were made up and they looked very lovely, so this look is typical of a princess living in Saudi Arabia. The books written about Joanna Al-Askari (LOVE IN A TORN LAND) is a full-face shot without a veil, as Joanna is half-Kurd and never veiled in her life. So, the cover image is actually Joanna in person, and represents how she looks when she goes to a party -- as you probably know, Kurdish women wear very colorful clothes, particularly to parties. The book about Maryam (FOR THE LOVE OF A SON) is also the true image of Maryam (Afhan) -- there is no veil, although there is a beautiful scarf. The only cover which does not truly represent the heroine is the image on MAYADA, DAUGHTER OF IRAQ. When I went to Iraq, I saw that the majority of women in Baghdad, did NOT veil. Mayada, who was very devout, did wear the Hijab, but did not cover her face, which is believes not to be required in Islam (I agree with her). We submitted photographs of Mayada to the publisher and asked that she be on the cover, but when the publisher took the book to market, getting their orders from bookstores, most refused to purchase the book to sell unless the cover was changed to show a more exotic image. That is how the current image of MAYADA came to be on the book cover. We were not too happy, but once the book is sold to a publisher, the publisher has to do what they need to do to sell the book -- it is a business and the beautiful & exotic Arab woman is very pleasing to look at, although it does not represent all women in the area, for sure. (The author does not have the right to refuse the publisher's cover.) I hope this explains it more fully for many readers. But, when you read the above, you will see that of the 13 books I have written, only one does not reflect exactly the life of the woman I wrote about. (And, that one is Mayada -- although now it is more common for women in Iraq to wear the veil due to the uprising of more conservative movement in that country.) So you see, the Princess books reflect exactly what the women wear (mainly for parties) in Saudi Arabia, while the other books do the same, other than MAYADA. I hope this makes you feel somewhat better. Certainly the true stories of these women should not be undermined when the cover is fairly representative of the lives of the individual women written about. And, for sure, although not every Arab woman is beautiful, so many are -- with their compelling beautiful dark hair, eyes, and olive skin, they tend to look very beautiful..

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