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Title: Virgins of Paradise by Barbara Wood ISBN: 0-380-72340-9 Publisher: Harper Mass Market Paperbacks Pub. Date: 01 December, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (21 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Provides interesting insight into an Islamic family
Comment: Having lived in the Islamic world for several years, I found this book entertaining but also quite insightful to the culture of family life dominated by men. The author fully explores a core group of characters and uses satellite characters to flesh out the family saga. I never had read anything by Barbara Wood, but after reading this book, I have ordered more of her works. The bottom line: entertaining to read, AND I learned something.
Rating: 5
Summary: Simply beautiful!
Comment: This novel has become a winter favorite for me. Snowed in on dark winter evenings I love to snuggle up with this book and allow it to take me away to another world.
Virgins of Paradise, by Barbara Wood, is an exquisitely painted picture of a Muslim family through five decades of love found and lost, war, royalty, loyalty, family ties broken and mended.
Though the ghostly presence of the elder Rasheed floats throughout the story, the rock-solid core of the Rasheed household is really Amira, his wife. She anchors the family with wisdom, her devout beliefs, and her healing herbs. Ibrahim, her son, in comparison, is a weak shell. It is the women in this story who seem to have all the strength, though their society has oppressed them.
This a moving and intriguing tale of the evolution of a family through its births, deaths, weddings, and daily life. Wood writes with such rich detail, you can feel all the research she did before writing this novel. She whisks you away to the hot, dusty city of Cairo, its narrow streets crowded with peddlars, beggars, and men thinking of a revolution.
The reader will want to know Amira's dark secret, find out what happened to the banished Rasheed family member, see if Nafisa will find love across enemy lines, and follow the lives of Camilla and Yasmina to adulthood.
It's winter; it's about time for me to visit with the Rasheeds again.
Rating: 4
Summary: Multigenerational saga of Egyptian women ~1945-1990
Comment: This novel of soap opera style love, honor and family secrets is intelligently told against a backdrop of Egyptian politics with a feminist theme focusing on the oppression of women in a male-dominated society of centuries long tradition. The rights of women and men in Egypt are drastically different. There is a passage in the book where one woman decrees that women should be informed by their husbands if they are being divorced, informed if they are taking a second or third wife, be given the right to divorce their husbands if they are being physically abused...basic rights that I expect as an American woman. A young woman in the novel dishonors her family by being raped, another because her hymen was broken innocently and she would not produce blood as proof of her virginity on her wedding night.
Amira is the matriarch of the prosperous Rasheed family. The story begins in 1945 and it is Amira's ever-present voice throughout that links the many women and children as their lives unfold through the years until the end of the book in the early 90's. Her husband has died and her son Ibrahim is now the head of the family. His first wife dies while giving birth to his daughter Camelia. Driven by grief and shame for not having a son, he curses God and disappears to Europe. He comes back with an English wife, Alice who also bears him a daughter, Yasmina. Although they want more children, the couple has bad luck with subsequent pregnancies and like many men in Egypt, Ibrahim becomes obsessed with producing male heirs. He takes the drastic measure of claiming the son of a beggar girl as his own. Most of the story focuses on Amira, Ibrahim, Alice, Camelia and Yasmina although there is a large cast of supporting characters.
I was appalled by the lack of rights and limited choices for women. It was entertaining and educational without being overly preachy or political. It was a fairly long book at 600 pages, but I really enjoyed reading it. Recommended.
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Title: Green City in the Sun by Barbara Wood ISBN: 0330307231 Publisher: Pan Books - Macmillan UK Pub. Date: 01 August, 1989 List Price(USD): $14.99 |
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Title: The Prophetess: A Novel by Barbara Wood ISBN: 0316816523 Publisher: Little Brown & Co Pub. Date: 01 May, 1996 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Soul Flame by Barbara Wood ISBN: 0451400666 Publisher: New Amer Library (Mm) Pub. Date: 01 September, 1988 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: Sacred Ground by Barbara Wood ISBN: 0312982526 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood ISBN: 0312320248 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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