Zoë Ferraris and Abdur-RahmanAbuo-Almajd in dialog about her interesting novels

We have a fresh opportunity to reflect about Saudi woman in American novels. At this point Zoë Ferraris is going to talk about her views of her novels.

Zoë Ferraris
Zoë Ferraris is an American novelist. She was born in Oklahoma. In 1991 she married a man from Saudi Arabia. She lived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with her in-laws for nine months. Her time in Saudi Arabia is the background for the three novels she has written.


Finding Nouf (2008)   

City of Veils (2010)

Kingdom of Strangers (2012)

In 2009, Ferraris won an Alex Award for Finding Nouf.

Finding Nouf also won the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction category.                                                               

Q: How did you know your husband?
ZF: We met in San Francisco, California. He is from Jeddah, and his family is Saudi and Palestinian Bedouin. He was living in San Francisco when we met, and a friend introduced us. We were married a few months later.

When our daughter was born, we moved to Jeddah to live with his family for almost a year. It was an incredible experience.

Q: How did you find it?
ZF: Knowing my husband was a huge learning experience for me. As an American, I didn’t know very much about Islam or Arab cultures, and he opened all of that knowledge for me. He taught me so much about culture and people -- I could never have learned it from reading books or watching TV.

Q: I wonder how can you help to understand the dynamics of Saudi woman.

ZF: My main character, Katya, was very inspired by the women I met in Saudi Arabia. Most of those women were struggling for more opportunities to work and study -- but they wanted to have families, too, so they were finding ways to juggle all of these responsibilities. They are still living in a country where they are not allowed to drive, and where their families or husbands don’t always approve of their desire to work outside the home. But they’re finding ways to handle it, and challenging social expectations. I see a lot of bravery and intelligence in these women.


Q: It is said that your novels give a very wrong and misleading idea of the Saudi man, are your works to give mainstream Saudi readers the jolt of seeing their world through the eyes of a fresh  American woman in Saudi family?

ZF: Nayir’s struggles are based on some of the men I know, but certainly not all men. It can be interesting for any reader to see their own culture through the eyes of a foreigner, but in this case I was more interested in bringing Nayir’s qualities into the understanding of the American reader -- in particular, his interest in staying true to his religious beliefs of modesty and right behavior. Of course it would be wrong to think that all Saudi men are like Nayir, but I have faith that my readers can understand that.

Q: I want to know why you focus on Saudi woman in your great novels.
ZF: In my novels, I have two main characters – Katya and Nayir. I am very interested in how gender segregation in Saudi Arabia affects them both as man and woman. Nayir really wants to find a wife, but he has no family to arrange a marriage for him, and he doesn’t feel comfortable talking to strange women, so he struggles with that.

Q: I enjoy reading Finding Nouf,  Could you elaborate on Nouf.
ZF: When I came back from Saudi Arabia, I discovered that many Americans don’t really see that country in a fair light. It’s a mysterious place to them, and they’ve learned a lot of stereotypes about it, so I wanted to make it more accessible and real. For example, Nayir is a devout Muslim, and a lot of people might associate that with extremism and violence. But I wanted to show a far more interesting picture: his own internal struggles to understand the right way of living, and how his beliefs fit with reality.


Nayir was my main inspiration for “Finding Nouf”. He wants to find a wife, but he can’t. When his best friend’s sister, Nouf, goes missing, and then turns up dead, her family accepts that it was an act of nature, but Nayir knows a lot about the desert where she died, and he believes it was not an accident. In order to find out who killed her, he has to talk to the women who knew her. Because of social restrictions and his own discomfort, that is difficult for him to do. For the first time, he is prying into a woman’s life, and in order to do that, he needs the help of a woman. This is how he meets Katya.

Katya works as a forensic technician in the police department. She thinks Nayir is a stuffy, old-fashioned beard, and he thinks she is far too liberal and not a very good Muslim. But they have to work together to solve the crime.

Q: In " City of Veils " you gave us a better understanding of the people of Jeddah and show  us the human side to this tragedy, Could you elaborate on that, please?
ZF: In my second book, I introduced some new characters: a young Saudi filmmaker named Leila, who is making a documentary that shows the bad sides of Jeddah. When she is murdered and her body is dumped on the beach, Katya and Nayir discover that there may be a political motive for the crime. I also introduce Miriam, an American woman who lives in Jeddah and whose husband has gotten into some serious trouble – he may have killed Leila. But as Katya and Nayir investigate, they discover a much more complex situation.

Q: This is uncomfortable for some Saudi  readers.  They feel the narrative voice is anti-Saudi man  in your works especially in" City of Veils ".
ZF: There are some early scenes in “City of Veils” where two of my American characters express their criticism of Saudi Arabia. There is Miriam, who feels like an outsider in Jeddah because of her inability to adapt there, and because she is fundamentally uneasy with her husband’s love for Saudi. She is critical, but after she meets Nayir and Katya, her judgments come to seem wrong. The other character, Mabus, is especially judgmental of Saudis, and – I can’t tell you everything without giving away the story -- by the end of the book, his perspectives come to seem even more wrong. It may make people uncomfortable, but I think it’s important to look at different perspectives and ask whether they are correct thinking or not.

Q: Could you elaborate on Kingdom of Strangers?

ZF: Katya is the focus of this novel. She is working for the police department full-time but still struggling to have more opportunities at work. She becomes involved in a serial killer investigation, and begins to break the rules. 

The crimes are gruesome; the killer is targeting immigrants and it’s very difficult to know where he will strike next. In order to find him, Katya has to go to the city’s dangerous “underworld.” She wants to solve the crime, but she puts her job in danger by doing this. It may even jeopardize her relationship with Nayir. He doesn’t approve of her actions, but he wants to protect her, and he wants to help.

All three novels focus on the relationship between Nayir and Katya, and they show the challenges they both face because of their attitudes about men and women. The novels also bring the reader to Jeddah and show a tiny bit of that vast and beautiful and complex place.

Q: I wonder how  your experience differ from Marianne Alireza in At the Drop of a Veil as a modern American Women in Saudi culture.

ZF:I’m sorry to say I haven’t read that book well enough to be able to comment on the similarities.

Q: In a dialog with Umm Zakiyyah she told me that Thus far, of all the fictional characters in her books, Sharif (as a main character) most closely reflects her own background, I wonder if Katya reflect your own background.

ZF: I wish that were true – I admire Katya. But there is no character in my novels who reflects my own background. Instead, they take their inspiration from people I’ve met.

Q:Are you planning any more novels about Saudi woman?
ZF: Not yet, but I am going back to the Middle East next year, and every time I go, I get inspired again.

Abdur-Rahman: Surly we are looking forward to reading it too, thank you very much, Ferraris.