From the two-time Man Booker Prize winner, a prescient and haunting novel of lif
e in Saudi Arabia. Frances Shore is a cartographer by trade, a maker of maps, bu
t when her husband's work takes her to Saudi Arabia she finds herself unable to
map the Kingdom's areas of internal darkness. The regime is corrupt and harsh, t
he expatriates are hard-drinking money-grubbers, and her Muslim neighbours are s
ecretive, watchful.
The streets are not a woman's territory; confined in her
flat, she finds her sense of self begin to dissolve. She hears whispers, sounds
of distress from the 'empty' flat above her head. She has only rumours, no facts
to hang on to, and no one with whom to share her creeping unease.
