Leila Slimani (The Perfect Nanny) analyzes sexual oppression in her native Morocco in Sex and Lies: True Stories of Women's Intimate Lives in the Arab World, translated from the French by Sophie Lewis. "Moroccans' motto is simple: Do what you wish, but never talk about it," she says. Yet, during a book tour for her novel Adèle, which depicts unapologetic female sexuality, Slimani is besieged by Moroccan women who defy convention and "talk about it." Here, she amplifies "stories that shook me, upset me, that angered me and sometimes disgusted me."
Nour, single, exemplifies Morocco's patriarchal view of women. Even men with whom she's sexually active believe that women should be virgins. Many women themselves describe non-virgins as ruined. Hymen reconstruction surgery is big business because "sexual deprivation... amounts to a capitalist system like any other." Behavior such as homosexuality, prostitution, adultery, sex outside of marriage and abortion are illegal (rape, while a crime, is rarely reported) and yet, obviously, "the reality is different and many people bend the rules."
Slimani largely embraces the view, as a Muslim herself, that in the Arab Muslim world "sexual deprivation as a social fact" is a "vast problem and one whose effects clearly impact the political realm." This book is part oral history and part manifesto, claiming that "sexual rights are a part of human rights; these are not minor rights, small boons that we can do without... these are fundamental needs and rights that ought to be inalienable and guaranteed for all." --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.