Ghada Karmi's book: In Search of Fatima

...is one of the most straight-forward, unselfconscious and unaffected piece of writing I've ever read. These are the highest compliments I can think of for someone of her intellectual stature and experience. It is so easy for academics to fall into the trap of intellectualising everything, it's a major miracle how someone with her background avoided that and came up with such a beautiful book.
She struck a chord with me for several other reasons...a semi-lonely childhood, a house frequented by her father's famous intellectual friends, a convent-school education, studying medicine instead of the arts even though she loved reading and writing to fulfill her parent's wishes...her (self-admitted) anglophilia, her friend's opinion (and her own) of her as "a dark-skinned English girl" and subsequent devotion to the Palestinian cause.
It reminded me in parts of Edward Said's memoir 'Out of Place', but 'In Search of Fatima' is special because it's written from a Muslim perspective, albeit by a person who describes herself as non-practising.
I bought the book at duty-free and could not put it down until I'd finished all 450 pages.
Good stuff.