ISBN: 0553816306
Godina izdanja: 2005
Jezik: Engleski
Autor: Strani

Souad - Burned Alive
Bantam, 2005
334 str.
meki povez
stanje: dobro

In Collaboration with Marie-Therese Cuny

When Souad was seventeen she fell in love. In her village, as in so many others, sex before marriage was considered a grave dishonour to one`s family and was punishable by death. This was her crime. Her brother-in-law was given the task of arranging her punishment. One morning while Souad was washing the family`s clothes, he crept up on her, poured petrol over her and set her alight.

In the eyes of their community he was a hero. An execution for a `crime of honour` was a respectable duty unlikely to bring about condemnation from others. It certainly would not have provoked calls for his prosecution. More than five thousand cases of such honour killings are reported around the world each year and many more take place that we hear nothing about.

Miraculously, Souad survived rescued by the women of her village, who put out the flames and took her to a local hospital. Horrifically burned, and abandoned by her family and community, it was only the intervention of a European aid worker that enabled Souad to receive the care and sanctuary she so desperately needed and to start her life again. She has now decided to tell her story and uncover the barbarity of honour killings, a practice which continues to this day.

Burned Alive is a shocking testimony, a true story of almost unbelievable cruelty. It speaks of amazing courage and fortitude and of one woman`s determination to survive. It is also a call to break the taboo of silence that surrounds this most brutal of practices and which ignores the plight of so many other women who are also victims of traditional violence.


--Controversy--
According to the book, she forgot about the incident for two decades until it was recovered through repressed memory therapy. Thérèse Taylor, an Australian historian, has pointed out numerous medical, historical and cultural inconsistencies in the book that put its authenticity in doubt.

Souad claims to have survived the attempt without medical assistance despite having burns to 70 percent of her body – a medical impossibility (a press release by the publisher of the US edition increased that figure to an even less plausible 90 percent). Soaud also recalls her sister being choked with a telephone cord at a time when Palestinian villages did not have telephones. So far, there is no independent evidence to support the publisher`s claim that the book is based on a true story or even that Souad exists at all. Taylor concludes her analysis by saying that she thinks it is likely that Souad no longer knows who she is or how she came to be burned.


Non-Fiction, Autobiography, Islam, Biography, Memoir, Feminism