(6) Infidel; Ayaan Hirsi Ali

If you are interested in the ethnic and social cleavages that affect Muslims in the Middle East and Nort Africa, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel is the perfect novel for you. Written in an elegant and honest style, Ali shares the story of her life through both the perspective in which she was born--Muslim and Somalian--and the perspective in which she currently resides--Western and Somalian.

The story begins with the unfortunate neglect of her father and the hyperbolic Islamic fundamentalism of her grandmother. Ali, because her father fought against the regime in Somalia in the 1980s and 1990s, was always presented with diverse views on the issues involving ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, and gender equity in Somalia. In her early childhood, Ali and her family were a part of the majority ethnic group in Somalia; therefore, they received several connections leading up the ladder of social mobility strictly because of their family heritage. Although her family took pride in their ethnicity, when they moved to Saudi Arabia (one of the most intense and traditional Muslim countries in the world), there was much freedom for women to transport themselves around the city and for Ali and her mother to communicate with anyone because of the rigid language barriers between Somalian and Arabic. She later exhibits a complex (more than most Westerners) understanding of the political, social, and economic culture of Europe and how the continent has affected the histories of Africa, the Middle East, and the rest of the world. She currently puts this talent into practice as a member of Parliament in the Netherlands.

This book gets several stars for its focus on representing Muslim-Somalian culture to its most accurate abilities; however, my only complaint deals with the quantity of information on her family that Ali includes in this novel. I'm pretty sure the book could have been cut down by fifty pages without some of the irrelevant references she makes to her sister and grandmother throughout the story. Some of them are funny, giving life to the story, and others share some of the traditional values of her family. All in all, I recommend this book for anyone of you to read. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a fantastic writer, and she has and probably never will be afraid to share publicly some of the cultural conflicts that pervade the Western and Muslim world.