num_pages: 368
description: ** Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)**If you really want to know a people start by looking inside their bedrooms. As political change sweeps the streets and squares the parliaments and presidential palaces of the Arab world Shereen El Feki has been looking at an upheaval a little closer to homein the sexual lives of men and women in Egypt and across the region. The result is an informative insightful and engaging account of a highly sensitive and still largely secret aspect of Arab society. Sex is entwined in religion tradition politics economics and culture so it is the perfect lens through which to examine the complex social landscape of the Arab world. From pregnant virgins to desperate housewives from fearless activists to religious firebrands from sex work to same-sex relations Sex and the Citadel takes a fresh look at the sexual history of the region and brings new voices to the debate over its future. This is no peep show or academic treatise but a highly personal and often humorous account of one womans journey to better understand Arab society at its most intimate and in the process to better understand her own origins. Rich with five years of groundbreaking research Sex and the Citadel gives us a unique and timely understanding of everyday lives in a part of the world that is changing before our eyes.
language: English
title: Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World
publisher: Pantheon