Sex and the Citadel : intimate life in a changing Arab world

Shereen El-Feki is a British journalist, who has a Welsh mother and an Egyptian father.  She dared to crack the secrecy on a very taboo subject in the modern Arab world--sex.  She examines the history of the region going back to the tenth century; analyzes the influences of colonialism; conducts her own interviews with medical professionals, groups of women; questions standard statistical data on aborton, prostitution, STDs, genital mutilation, lesbianism.  In its candor and surprising conclusions, this book is very much analagous to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second sex.