“This is the kind of manuscript that reminds me why people want to become editors and agents, and why writers are willing to judge contests: you hope that among the bad manuscripts and the good ones and the very good ones there will be one that is great. This book is great.”
—Ann Patchett

“Sanow brings Saudi Arabia to life in seven windswept tales. Each character grapples with the strictures of Saudi society and the rapid changes affecting the nation, both from the outside and from within. A fascinaing glimpse into a world with which many Westerners are unfamiliar.”
—Booklist
 

“[The stories] detail a sense of isolation through a range of intriguing characters.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Fascinating . . . The temptation here is to label this an exotic and esoteric book, but it is the iconic characters that provide the fulcrum for these seven linked stories. Memorable books such as this reinforce the old saw that people are always more interesting than places.”
—ForeWord Magazine

“Impressive. A complexly rendered fresco that delves into a country undergoing explosive change tempered with expat Americans who have been there so long there may be no going back to anything else. . . The stories stand alone as a masterful telling. But there is a thread only revealed toward the end which makes them all the more powerful.”
—Provincetown Banner

“Does everything that a work of fiction set in a much-mystified country should: it provides us with an insider’s view of the many sides of the culture and forces us to query our assumptions about it, all the while presenting us with wonderful stories and characters who are the antithesis of stereotypes--vivid, fully formed, and flawed, yet filled with hope and yearning.”
—Women’s Review of Books