There was an article in the New York Times about the lawsuit in 1995, and another in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in 1996.

Another woman claimed that Sasson had plagiarized her manuscript. There was also a lawsuit involving this book. A real Saudi princess would have known this and would not have made such an error. The fact is that Saudi mosques have separate sections set aside for women. There are factual details that add to my suspicion, such as the book's claim that women are not allowed in mosques. And finally, it doesn't seem likely to me that a member of the Saudi royal family would confide such intimate details of her life to a foreigner and make them available for publication abroad. The fact that the book is extremely one-sided in its view of Saudi royal family life raises my suspicions – people's lives are rarely so one-dimensional. It's not credible that such a book, with such details, could be published without everyone in the family immediately knowing who did it. But I find it very difficult to believe that the narrator of this book was a real person telling her own life story. Some of these tales (such as Filipina housekeepers finding out that their jobs contain 'duties' that are not what they expected) actually are consistent with things I've heard from other sources. It's the story of a young woman who was stoned to death for bringing dishonor upon her family – she had been raped by her brother's friends, who then lied and claimed she had enticed them. It tells of a Filipino woman who came to Saudi Arabia to take a job working as a housekeeper in a private home, only to learn upon arrival that her duties also included providing daily sexual release to her employer and his two sons.

Princess depicts how even royal women are beaten, executed, and enslaved by their fathers, husbands, and brothers. Even though she is a member of the royal family, Sultana is bound by a strict society that she says defines women as nothing more than vessels for sexual relief and breeders of children for the men. The book supposedly tells of the life of Sultana (not her real name), a granddaughter of the al-Saud warlord who brought most of the Arabian peninsula under his family's control at the dawn of the 20th century. Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi ArabiaĪvon Books in the U.S., Bantam in the U.K. But is it indeed a 'true story' or is it fiction/hoax? Summary This book claims to tell the 'true story' of a princess in Saudi Arabia, filled with many anecdotes of misogynistic treatment she and other women in her family endured at the hands of men. A Review of Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean P.

Princess behind the veil