Behind the Kingdom's Veil: Inside the New Saudi Arabia Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Middle East History and Travel)

by Susanne Koelbl, Karen Elliott House (Foreword by)

Overview

A First-Hand Look at Saudi Arabian Life as Few Outsiders Have Seen It

"It's like watching a movie - just better," Dr. Elisabeth Kendall, Oxford University, Arabic and Islamic Studies.

2020 Finalist Sarton Women's Literary Award for Nonfiction
#1 Bestseller on Saudi Arabia, Social Group Studies, Islam, Civil Rights, Islamic Banking & Finance

Witness the mysterious world of Saudi Arabia. Understand Saudi culture, politics, history, human rights, and women´s rights as seen through the intimate and insightful experiences of an award-winning journalist.

Few Westerners have been allowed a closer look at the inner workings of Saudi Arabia. Susanne Koelbl, prize-winning journalist for the German news magazine Der Spiegel, strips away the veil covering many secrets of this mysterious kingdom. For years she traveled the Middle East, and recently lived in Riyadh during the most dramatic changes since the country’s founding.

Peek inside the black box that is Saudi Arabia. Koelbl has cultivated relationships on every level of Saudi society and is equally at ease with ultra-conservative Salafi preachers, oppositionists, and women from all walks of life.

• Listen to intimate conversations with women about their newly offered freedoms
• Have breakfast with Royal Highnesses, meet Osama bin Laden’s bomb-making trainer, enter palaces of secret service chiefs
• View an in-depth portrait of the all-powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)

If you have an interest in books such as Robert Lacey’s Inside the Kingdom, Bradley Hope’s Blood and Oil, or Kim Ghattas’s Black Wave; expect unique insights into the new Saudi Arabia, travel through the rapidly changing kingdom, and be a witness to very personal encounters with the citizens of Saudi Arabia in Susanne Koelbl’s Behind the Kingdom’s Veil.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642503449
Publisher:	Mango Media
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,064,701
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Susanne Koelbl is an award-winning journalist and a military and foreign correspondent for the German news magazine Der Spiegel. Her stories highlight the intricate dynamics in conflict areas and wars around the world, including the Balkans, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Koelbl is known for her probing reports from Syria, Afghanistan and North Korea. Her highly acclaimed book Dark Beloved Country: People and Power in Afghanistan. was published in 2009.

Always close to the people, Koelbl uses their voices to make complicated political and societal contexts accessible. For her in-depth and thorough reporting she received several industry recognitions, including the Liberty Award and the Henry-Nannen-Price award. In her exceptional interviews with state leaders, intelligence-chiefs and Islamic extremists, Koelbl repeatedly challenges the powerful, including the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (wanted for genocide with an international arrest warrant), or the underground Hamas leader Khaled Mashal. Koelbl has excellent contacts in all political camps in the Middle East.

Koelbl is a fellow of the Bertelsmann Foundation's German-Israeli Young Leaders Program, a Knight Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan and was named a Media Ambassador with the German-Chinese Exchange Program of the Bosch Foundation at Tsingua Universityin Beijing. As a Knight Wallace Fellow, Koelbl gave guest lectures in 2012 on the war in Syria and the forty-year Afghanistan crisis. As a Knight Wallace alumni Koelbl is connected and tied into top influential media outlets in the US.

The author has been travelling to Saudi Arabia since 2011. Most recently she lived in Riyadh during 2018-2019. She currently resides in Berlin, Germany.

Karen Elliott House (1947-) was born in Matador, Texas, population 900. She earned a BJ degree at UT Austin where she discovered the world of news reporting on the student newspaper. She was a reporter, foreign editor and finally publisher of The Wall Street Journal, where she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for her reporting on the Middle East. Her first book, "On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future," published by Knopf in 2012 is a portrait of Saudi society and culture and examines the fragility of the ruling regime. The book repesents three decades of reporting in this shrouded kingdom. She currently resides in Boston, MA.

Read an Excerpt

(Excerpt) Chapter 1: Welcome to the Salafists: How My Landlord Tries to Save Me from Satan As a woman in Saudi Arabia, it is not as if you can’t go places. You can go wherever you like. You just never arrive anywhere. I wander through the busy streets of Riyadh. Outside of the Bazi Baba Restaurant, known for its delicious food and fresh juices, the tables are packed with men. Women who want to eat or drink have to stand in front of a small window covered by a flap. They order and wait outside until their food is ready. Coffee shops have recently sprouted up on Tahlia Street, the capital’s most fashionable boulevard. Here, too, you will see only men. Even the fact that women can sit outside is considered progress. In the new Saudi Arabia, change is occurring every day, often at a dizzying pace. But a society that has cultivated a certain lifestyle for many decades—actually for centuries—certainly does not shed its traditions and beliefs overnight. During my first few days in Riyadh, I stay at a hotel, a red building adorned by ornamental arches. In the lobby, guests lounge in blue velvet armchairs with brocade trim, where golden chandeliers hang from the ceiling. Upon my arrival, the receptionist proudly shows me the pool and fitness studio. I inquire about the opening hours: Sorry, for men only. Massages are also available, but again, sorry, men only. I retire to my darkened room. Outside, it is scorching hot. I probably won’t get used to the curtains being permanently drawn so that no one can look in. I phone Mazen, a realtor I found on the internet. My mood improves considerably when he says he can find me an apartment with windows. Is a woman even allowed to rent property in Saudi Arabia? In theory, yes. A new law has made it possible. But in practice, it’s usually still the family who decide what a woman can and cannot do. Very few families would allow a grown woman to live alone without male protection. Likewise, single men are prohibited from renting an apartment in a building with female residents. However, as a Western woman, the local customs and family rules don’t apply to me. One of the apartments Mazen offers me meets my criteria. It’s in the Olaya District and has plenty of light and a balcony with a view of the Al Faisaliyah Center, the second-tallest building in the city, as well as the highest, the thousand-foot Kingdom Center. It’s like having a view of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building at the same time. My landlord, Colonel Hasan, is a former air force pilot. He lives with his wives and a lot of children on a large property at the end of the street. Colonel Hasan is without a doubt a shrewd businessman, a man of the world, and deeply religious. One evening, I join him on his terrace just behind the entrance gate, where he receives his guests. A cook brings soup, lamb with rice, spinach, and coffee. Colonel Hasan recounts his training to become a fighter pilot in the United States. He shows me around the house and introduces me to one of his four daughters, a nineteen-year-old studying at university to be a French and English translator.

Table of Contents

Prologue
Foreword

Welcome to the Salafists: How My Landlord Tries to Save Me from Satan
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: Time of the Bulldozer
Life under the Abaya: Black or Black?
Complex Family Affairs
Car Cowboys
The Men’s Running Group, or How Mr. Zayd Lost His Groove
Brief Escapes: The Malls
We’ll Get You: Death of a Dissident
In the North: With the Proud Shammar, Where Men Can Still Be Men
In the East: With the Shia, Where Oil and Trouble Can Be Found
Alcohol: How the Buzz Gets into the Bottle
The Crown Jewels: Oil, Power, Money
Bandar, the Black Prince: Saudi Arabia’s Secret Weapon
Seven Dates a Day Keep the Devil Away
The Royals: A Terrifyingly Nice Family
The Faustian Pact of Diriyah
The Magic Scent of Wood and Sweat
Qatar: My Brother, My Foe
The Magic of Batha
How Little Karim Tried to Solve the Yemen Crisis
Richard of Arabia: Making the Desert Bloom
Blue Gold
Forbidden Love among the Wahhabis
Brave Women
Osama bin Laden’s Bomb-Making Instructor Reveals All
Birthday with Evil Spirits
Marriage, a Straitjacket
Room for a Single Woman, Please
Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing
Liberated Art
The Beauty of Al-Ahsa through the Eyes of Abdullah
The Revolution Comes Too Late for Pious Jamila

Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Timeline of Saudi History
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
​About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Koelbl offers a fascinating array of acutely well-observed glimpses into what’s changing inside the Kingdom—and what isn’t. Behind the engaging style and lively scenes lie serious questions that challenge assumptions about where the Kingdom is heading. If you want to peek into the Kingdom, reading this captivating selection of first-hand snapshots feels like watching a movie, only more informative.”

—Dr. Elisabeth Kendall, Senior Research Fellow in Arabic & Islamic Studies, Pembroke College, University of Oxford.

"Through the close-up look at Saudi people she provides, Koelbl’s book will help readers gauge the depth and breadth of the challenge facing the kingdom’s attempt to reform." -Karen Elliott House, author of On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future, Knopf 2012