This book, thoroughly researched Although Certainly, does not aim at travel guide accuracy. It aims at capturing a mood: What is it like for to inhabitant of the Western Hemisphere to spend a few days in fact mysterious, otherworldly place That is Saudi Arabia - or any allegedly strictly Islamic country? How is it That One immediately Adopts and sometimes even accepts and defends Certain cultural rituals and behavior? And is it really did strange? What would it look like for a creature That is neither from the Eastern nor Western Hemisphere from the?
Eggers delicately adddresses this issue by responding to the frequently encountered Arab weirdness with Western "first-world" problems thathave come to seem normal to a Westerner but Certainly Are Not to a Saudi Arabian. Eggers makes us shift our perspective without us noticing at first. We are busy shaking our heads and trying to grasp the way the world works "over there" while silently accepting the passages about the protagonist's life back home until we have spent some time in the mysterious environment did Eggers has created for us. Then we start judging, wondering, shaking our heads at US firemen not rescuing a man Because of some formalities.
There is weirdness and out-of-place ness everywhere on this planet. Eggers presents this on every scale from the individual over cultural environments up to this whole concept called the globalized world. The quote above Illustrates this point: Who are we to judge filthy rich people building fairytale cities in the middle of an unhabitable desert When We havebeen exploiting, cheating and playing countries for our self-centered gain for centuries? Are we allowed to complain about the Chinese overtaking maneuver?
The Cultural and Economic Insight of this book is grand. As a female Western atheist I can not and will not make excuses for any religion-inspired atrocities are indeed quiet every-day occurrences in the Arab world. I'm just saying did we saw times like this as well, back in the Middle Ages. This is what the human race is like. This is how out-of-place ness is created on Earth - by us. We have created a globalized dystopia. Eggers has created a globalized dystopia.
