City of Veils: A Novel

by Zoë Ferraris Narrated by Kate Reading

Overview

When the body of a brutally beaten woman is found on the beach in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Detective Osama Ibrahim dreads investigating another unsolvable murder-chillingly common in a city where the veils of conservative Islam keep women as anonymous in life as the victim is in death.



But Katya, one of the few females in the coroner's office, is determined to identify the woman and find her killer. Aided by her friend Nayir, she soon discovers that the victim was a young, controversial filmmaker named Leila. Was it Leila's connection to an incendiary Koranic scholar or a missing American man that got her killed?



City of Veils combines a suspenseful and tightly woven mystery with an intimate and nuanced portrait of women's lives in the Middle East.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"A gripping, many times disturbing, story of murder and the search for justice in an ancient society at odds with a woman's fight for independence."—Kathleen Kent, Author of The Heretic's Daughter

"Zoë Ferraris delivers the Muslim The Da Vinci Code. It kept me up at night. I loved it!"—Ranya Idliby, Co-author of The Faith Club

"An intense and thoughtful thriller."—Kate Furnivall, Author of The Girl from Junchow

"Superb....Ferraris is one of the most important new voices in crime fiction."—Michael Koryta, Author of So Cold the River

"A fascinating, insightful, and remarkably balanced look inside a society unfamiliar to most readers."—Jenny White, Author of The Winter Thief

"Exhilarating. Ferraris masterfully captures the nuances of the Saudi culture and its women, while brilliantly exposing the conflict between tradition and desire."—Mahbod Seraji, Author of Rooftops of Tehran

"A marvelous book. Ferraris demonstrates the instinctive authority of both an elegant stylist and a born storyteller."—David Corbett, Author of Do They Know I'm Running?

"Taut and intelligent, set against a troubling backdrop of brutality, oppression and searing desert heat."—Anne Zouroudi, Author of The Messenger of Athens

Entertainment Weekly

"Remarkable...Its mystery takes place within a culture that has itself largely been under wraps...It's the individual journeys of Nayir and Katya, who abide by their society's strictures even as they are frustrated by them, that elevate Finding Nouf to a larger human drama."

Los Angeles Times

PRAISE FOR FINDING NOUF:

"Ferraris shows how the clash of tradition and desire, especially for women, is fraught with danger both hidden and overt... She open[s] Saudi Arabia for mystery fans to reveal the true minds and hearts of its denizens."

Anne Zouroudi - author of The Messenger of Athens

"Taut and intelligent, set against a troubling backdrop of brutality, oppression and searing desert heat."

David Corbett - author of Do They Know I'm Running?

"A marvelous book. Ferraris demonstrates the instinctive authority of both an elegant stylist and a born storyteller."

Mahbod Seraji - author of Rooftops of Tehran

"Exhilarating. Ferraris masterfully captures the nuances of the Saudi culture and its women, while brilliantly exposing the conflict between tradition and desire."

Jenny White - author of The Winter Thief

"A fascinating, insightful, and remarkably balanced look inside a society unfamiliar to most readers."

Cara Black - author of Murder in the Latin Quarter

"Lifts the veil on Saudi Arabia.... Ferraris weaves an engrossing, taut tale."

Michael Koryta - author of So Cold the River

"Superb.... Ferraris is one of the most important new voices in crime fiction."

Kate Furnivall - author of The Girl from Junchow

"An intense and thoughtful thriller."

Kathleen Kent - author of The Heretic's Daughter

"A gripping, many times disturbing, story of murder and the search for justice in an ancient society at odds with a woman's fight for independence."

Ranya Idliby - co-author of The Faith Club

PRAISE FOR CITY OF VEILS:

"Zoë Ferraris delivers the Muslim The Da Vinci Code. It kept me up at night. I loved it!"

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170814183
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/09/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

City of Veils

A Novel

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By Ferraris, Zoë

Little, Brown and Company

Copyright © 2010 Ferraris, Zoë
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780316074278

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1

The woman’s body was lying on the beach. “Eve’s tomb,” he would later come to think of it, not the actual tomb in Jeddah that was flattened in 1928, to squash out any cults attached to her name, nor the same one that was bulldozed again in 1975, to confirm the point. This more fanciful tomb was a plain, narrow strip of beach north of Jeddah.

That afternoon, Abu-Yussuf carried his fishing gear down the gentle slope to the sand. He was a seasoned fisherman who preferred the activity for its sport rather than its practical value, but a series of layoffs at the desalination plant had forced him to take up fishing to feed his family. Sixty-two and blessed with his mother’s skin, he had withstood a lifetime of exposure to the sun and looked as radiant as a man in his forties. He hit the edge of the shore, the hard-packed sand, with an expansive feeling of pleasure; there were certainly worse ways to feed a family. He looked up the beach and there she was. The woman he would later think of as Eve.

He set his tackle box on the sand and approached carefully in case she was sleeping, in case she sat up and wiped her eyes and mistook him for a djinn. She was lying on her side, her dark hair splayed around her head like the tentacles of a dangerous anemone. The seaweed on her cloak looked at first like some sort of horrible growth. One arm was tucked beneath the body; the other one was bare, and it rested on the sand in a pleading way, as a sleeper might clutch a pillow during a bad dream. The hand was mutilated; it looked to be burned. There were numerous cuts on the forearm. Her bottom half was naked, the black cloak pushed up above her waist, the jeans she was wearing tangled around her feet like chains. His attention turned to the half of her face that wasn’t buried in sand. Whole sections of her cheeks and lips were missing. What remained of the skin was swollen and red, and there were horrible cuts across her forehead. One eye was open, vacant, dead.

“Bism’allah, ar-rahman, ar-rahim,” he began to whisper. The prayer spooled from his mouth as he stared dumbfounded and horrified. He knew he shouldn’t look, he shouldn’t want that sort of image knocking around in his memory, but it took an effort to turn away. Her left leg was half buried in the sand, but now that he was closer, he saw that the right one was cut around the thigh, the slashes bulbous and curved like tamarinds. The rest of the skin was unnaturally pale and bloated. He knew better than to touch the body, but he had the impulse to lay something over the exposed half of her, to give her a last bit of dignity.

He had to go back up to the street to get a good cellular signal. The police came, then a coroner and a forensics team. Abu-Yussuf waited, still clutching his fishing rod, the tackle box planted firmly by his feet. The young officer who first arrived on the scene treated him with affection and called him “uncle.” Would you like a drink, uncle? A chair? I can bring a chair. They interviewed him politely. Yes, uncle, that’s important. Thank you. The whole time, he kept the woman in his line of sight. Out of politeness, he didn’t stare.

While the forensics team worked, Abu-Yussuf began to feel crushingly tired. He sensed that shutting his eyes would lead to a dangerous sleep, so he let his eyes drift out to sea, let his thoughts drift further. Eve. Her real tomb was in the city. It had always seemed strange that she was buried in Jeddah, and that Adam was buried in Mecca. Had they had a falling-out after they were exiled from the Garden of Eden? Or had Adam, like so many men today, simply died first, giving Eve time to wander? His grandmother, rest her soul, once told him that Eve had been 180 meters tall. His grandmother had seen Eve’s grave as a girl, before the king’s viceroy had demolished the site. It had been longer than her father’s entire camel caravan.

One of the forensics men bent over the body. Abu-Yussuf snapped out of his reverie and caught a last glimpse of the girl’s bare arm. Allah receive her. He leaned over and picked up his tackle box, felt a rush of nausea. Swallowing hard, he looked up to the street and began to walk with an energy he didn’t really have. Uncle, can I assist? This was another officer, taller than the first, with a face like a marble sculpture, all smooth angles and stone. The officer didn’t give him time to protest. He took Abu-Yussuf’s arm and they walked up together, taking one slow step at a time. The going became easier when he imagined Eve, a gargantuan woman stomping across cities as if they were doormats. She could have taken this beach with one leap. Pity it was only the modern woman who had been rendered so small and frail.

Continues...

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Excerpted from City of Veils by Ferraris, Zoë Copyright © 2010 by Ferraris, Zoë. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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