I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman

Poet and translator Haddad's quarterly, Jasad, a controversial magazine in the Arab world for its emphasis on the human body (and nude photographs), sparked a question from a non-Arab journalist about how an Arab woman could spearhead an erotic publication. The incident prompted Haddad to compose this brief, spirited text about life as a "liberated Arab woman" in modern Beirut. A somewhat pedantic introduction ("if you are longing to be comforted in your Orientalist views... you'd better not go any further") soon gives way to a more exploratory, philosophical tone as Haddad sets about to deconstruct and analyze what it means to be an Arab woman writer. Part memoir, part argument, Haddad's book examines subjects as wide-ranging as her childhood hatred of Barbies, reading de Sade and Lolita, the nature of home and attachment, the trouble with Beirut ("Where homosexuals have to hide as if they represent a deadly plague"), and why she created Jasad in the first place. The title, a reference to the protagonist of The Arabian Nights whose life is spared by the king because of her ability to entertain him with stories, becomes an appropriate central metaphor for Haddad's project%E2%80%94tearing down the classic "symbol of Arab female cultural oppression"%E2%80%94in a book that, despite its polemical nature, is surprisingly entertaining. (Sept).