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| Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia | 
 enlarge | Author: Carmen Bin Ladin
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $3.85
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Avg. Customer Rating:  106 reviews
Sales Rank: 15229
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.8 x 0.7
ISBN: 0446694886
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.42092
EAN: 9780446694889
ASIN: 0446694886
Publication Date: June 13, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The New York Times bestseller by Osama bin Laden's sister-in-law that provides a penetrating look inside the Bin Laden family, Saudi society, and the treatment of Saudi women is now in paperback with a new chapter. In 1974, Carmen, half-Swiss and half-Persian, married into the Bin Laden family. She was young and in love, an independent European woman hurled into a society she neither knew nor understood. Her story takes us inside the Bin Laden family and a power structure in which men regularly subjugate their wives. It also tells of the author's own personal battle to keep custody of her three daughters after her 1988 separation from her husband. INSIDETHEKINGDOM dares to pull off the veil that conceals one of the most secretive countries in the world, revealing the intrigues and conflicts within its most infamous family.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 101 more reviews...
Interesting memoir of how people live in Saudi Arabia September 13, 2004
72 out of 79 found this review helpful
This is a very interesting tale from the sister-in-law of Osama Bin Laden, who was married to one of his many brothers until the mid-1990s. While the author does comment on Osama from time to time, the real interest of the book is her insider's perspective on how the Saudi Arabs behave, the women as much as the men.
I found myself having a lot of compassion for people who live so bifurcated a life as the author says the Saudis do. She relates many instances of Saudi women and men behaving entirely differently when visiting Europe than they do in their daily lives in their own country. And she tells of some of her own behaviors that would seem entirely appropriate to most of us -- such as walking across the street to her sister-in-law's home -- that were scandalous for a woman to do in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, accepted practice was for a woman to be DRIVEN IN A CAR across the street, since to appear in public, even covered by a black abaya (aka chador, aka burkha), was immodest according to the Saudi's fanatically strict interpretation of Islam. These guys are so afraid of women that it would be laughable if their treatment of women weren't so criminal. And the older Saudi women are as bad as the men, forcing young women to adopt codes of behavior that reduce them to chattel property of the men in their families.
And the author doesn't shy away from pointing out the role that money plays in Saudi society. Like everywhere else in the world, when money talks, everybody walks, but the incredible wealth of the Bin Ladens sets them above the inhuman strictures of Saudi society so that they were -- and presumably still are --able to escape much of the oppression that afflicts those of more modest means. One wonders how the poor survive in that society.
The scariest part of the book for me -- and, trust me, there are many frightening parts -- is when the author characterizes Saudi women as pets, who are kept inside the home ALL OF THE TIME and expected to greet husbands and brothers with joy when the men deign to arrive at home and venture into the women's part of the house. (Yeah -- women live among themselves in a sort of harem arrangement.) And because they are inside all of the time, women are prone to vitamin defficiencies and other diseases brouht on by lack of fresh air, sunlight and exercise. One is reminded of animals that are kept in tiny stalls their whole lifes and used only for breeding.
This stuff is truly unbelieveable, which is probably why intelligent Western women continue to be suckered into marriages with guys like Yesalem bin Ladin, to whom the author was married for many years. Who would actually think that a man who professes to love you could treat you in such a barbaric manner?
Once it was clear to him that his wife was getting a divorce, Yesalem bin Ladin tried to forcibly take the author's children from Europe to Saudi Arabia, doubtless never to be seen again. Then, when he failed to do that, Yesalem bin Ladin cut his children completely off, even refusing to speak to one of his daughters during a chance encounter on a European street.
There is a lot of food for thought in this book, which can be read quickly but will stay with you for a long while after you finish. The free nations of the world will do well to take seriously the challenges posed by societies such as that of Saudi Arabia.
 Couldn't Put It Down! August 1, 2004
65 out of 71 found this review helpful
I bought this book this morning, started it this afternoon and it is now early evening and I just finished it. I will be passing this book on to my three daughters. Carmen bin Ladin, half Swiss and half Persian, tells a love story of herself as an independent European woman falling in love with Yeslam bin Ladin, a half-brother to the infamous Osama.
Carmen is accustomed to living in Europe, mainly Switzerland, and she and her husband also spend time in California. Family matters take them back to Saudi Arabia where she is always an outsider and a foreigner. Life really begins to change in 1979 when Saudi Arabia begins to turn back to the strict rules of Wahabi Islam after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. Life for women and all females becomes even more oppressive, to put it mildly.
I once worked in a bank where one of the many Saudi Princes had his accounts while attending college in Calif. His free spending habits and the arrogance of his groupies was mind-boggling. Carmen bin Ladin tells of the exhorbitant wealth of the royals and some of the decadence.
The author's struggle to raise her three daughters as independent, educated thinkers and her crumbling marriage against the backdrop of the bin Ladin family is a wonderful read.
 Take it or leave it March 16, 2006
19 out of 24 found this review helpful
I picked up this book last year after I saw an interview with Carmen Bin Ladin's daughter on a cable news channel thinking that it would an interesting story.
The book describes Carmen Bin Ladin's courtship, marriage, and (subsequent) divorce to the older brother of serial-terrorist Osama Bin Laden. Although the book is interesting in some passages, it is also predictable; it seemed obvious that Carmen would eventually leave her emotionally-crippled husband because she was a modernized women raised in Switzerland who wanted to lead her own life. The book also seemed somewhat careless, choppy, and rushed. Carmen Bin Ladin just breezed through the last few chapters so she could complete the book. It would have been a much better read if it were longer (only 206 pages total) and included more detail and insight from the author.
Three stars and that is still being generous.
If you're interested in reading about Saudi/Middle East culture then I recommend anything by Jean Sasson whoes books are light-years more superior than Ms. Carmen Bin Ladin's.
A Must Read for all women July 15, 2004
18 out of 22 found this review helpful
Normally I don't read biographies. Usually they focus on rags to riches stories that I can't relate to. This book was the exception.
This bio starts normally: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl get married. But this is where the normality ends. Carmen marries into the Bin Ladin family,which back then were not synominous with terrorism. Carmen, who is foreign to Saudi life, is forced to live in isolation. She cannot come and go as she pleases without being completly veiled. She is forced to live in a world where women are property of the men; she is viewed as a foreigner by the other women because she was not born Saudi. Women,imagine going in a time machine from 2004 to the mid 19th century. At least that is the closest analogy I can think of.
This book made me appreciate the simple freedoms that we Americans take advantage of. I couldn't imagine living a life where I felt so powerless as a woman. I admire Carmen for being strong enough to get away from Saudi Arabia once and for all. Every female should read this book. It is an eye opener how far we women have come in America.
A Brother in law of the worst kind August 13, 2004
17 out of 23 found this review helpful
Some people fall in love only to find out that a big mistake was made, not only with their husband but with their husbands family. This book is about a family with a very well known name, the Ladin's. None other than Osama Ben Ladins brother. She met him in the United States learning every thing he could about America and it's way of life. The marriage took place in Saudi Arabia and the living hell began. Carmen was half-Swiss and half-Persian, her mind wasn't in the right place being blinded by love. Love can do funny things to a person, it can make you forget what type of a person you may be marrying. The customs of other lands are forgotten until the marriage takes place and then she finds out more than she really wanted to know. The Koran became her only book to read and her rights she thought she had, soon disappeared. The book takes you into the Islamic fundamentalists life style and into the minds of her husband and brother in law. Her husband Yeslam divorced Carmen and her life came close to ending by Islamic law. Read the book and find out what she knew about the men in her life and 9/11. When she heard the news of the attack on America, she knew that her husbands brother and her husband were connected in some way. Her book takes you behind the lines of the terrorist and their Islamic way of thinking. A must read- Larry Hobson-Author The Day Of The Rose
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