Enrich Your Travels with Longitude
We've got the classic, new and hard-to-find books and maps to help you get the most out of your adventures.
Dreams of Trespass, Tales of a Harem Girlhood
by Fatima Mernissi
- BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
- 1995
- PAPER
- 242 PAGES
- FAVORITE
E-MAIL
PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION
This gentle memoir captures the hierarchy and decorum of growing up behind the door of a harem, which, as the author explains, is not necessarily a collection of wives, but rather a house in which all the women of a family are secluded. The work is also an engrossing portrait of Fez in the 1940s. Mernissi, a sociologist, brings to vivid and often hilarious detail the exploits of the various women in the house: her mother, fighting against the veil, her grandmother, clinging to tradition, and especially a divorced aunt, who teaches her much about rebellion. Surely the most charming feminist tract ever written. (Mernissi has also written "Beyond the Veil," a scholarly study of relations between the genders in Muslim society, item MDE35.)
Related Items
Longitude provides recommended reading for travelers in partnership with the leading tour operators and travel programs for hundreds of destinations worldwide. We've got the classic, new and hard-to-find books and maps to help you get the most out of your adventures.