Nine Parts of Desire is a brave book in many respects, exploring, as it does, the world of Muslim women in numerous countries across the Middle East. Its author, Geraldine Brooks, is a Westerner and a Jew who worked for a number of years as a journalist in the countries about which she writes. This fact alone has drawn criticism of her book because she is an ‘outsider’ writing about a religion which polarises views. I have read numerous books written by Muslim women in which they consider, explore, and sometimes excoriate their world. Brooks’ book contributes much to my evolving understanding, and I felt her anecdotes, facts, and analysis corroborated and stacked up well against these others, and contributed a broader view by comparing the realities of living within Islam in different Middle Eastern countries. 
 
When I began reading this book, I was fairly certain it would challenge my attitudes, and it did, but in a good way. My perception was that a woman living in a Muslim country faced numerous restrictions. Through anecdotes and observation of the women she met and worked with, Brooks offers both positives and negatives to living in their world. The quiet strength and subtle influence of women such as Queen Noor of Jordan sit alongside Faezeh Hashemi who laboured to bring about the Islamic Women’s Games.
 
There are plenty of impracticalities (as perceived by me as a Western woman) for women living in, and visiting Muslim countries, but Brooks reveals she was attuned to the problems and found ways around them in order to carry out her work as a journalist. Her coverage of people and events in the Middle East also offered a perspective that a male journalist would not have gained.
 
This is not a book to be skimmed, but one worthy of deeper thinking and discussion; I would recommend it to book clubs as well as to individuals who enjoy thinking about what they have read.