Being a contemporary history freak, I didn’t even read any reviews before buying this book. I simply wanted to know what the truth behind Gaddafi’s “amazons” was and like every bibliophile, wanted to pay someone some money in doing so (instead of reading it for free on the web).
'Gaddafi’s Harem' starts off as the story of a girl named “Soraya”. Soraya is plucked from her mother’s boutique and imprisoned in a royal harem of sorts, after being identified by “The Guide” (Gaddafi) in an event at her school. Her story forms the first half of the story of this book. Written in first person, the tale is gripping and ultimately, unputdownable. You find yourself rooting for the little girl when she is subjected to Gaddafi’s weird sexual fantasies or when she falls in love innocently with a young man in the premises of the harem or when she tries to escape from her oppressing surroundings.
However, the second half of the book peters off a bit in the pace and the narrative reverts to the journalist’s third person narrative (though the conversations she has with the various elements of Gaddafi’s machinery are insightful). The thrust of this part is mostly to prove that Soraya’s story is really true- which put me off a little because the moment I began reading her tale I knew it to be true. No one would conjure up such colorful lies just to get a book written about them, especially at the cost of their honor in a country such as Libya. There are a few saving graces in the second part, like the author’s interview with one of Gaddafi’s amazons; however, such sections are few and far in between.
The book is essential reading, for like many countries who are ashamed of their past (take Nazi Germany for instance) and find it convenient to sometimes forget, the book stands as proof that this happened.
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