What a powerful story. I’ve seen interviews from her and she has incredible poise and courage and that definitely comes through on the page. I genuinely couldn’t put it down. She’s unflinchingly honest and deeply inspiring all at the same time.

A beautiful and heartbreaking account of growing up female in Saudi Arabia, and the courage it took Manal al-Sharif to fight for what she believed in. I will recommend this to everyone I come across.

This is a very powerful story, although Saudi Arabia have lifted the Driving ban, women are controlled by men in all other aspects of their life. This book is a remarkable account of a woman who was jailed for driving, she also talks about the injustices and restrictions women face. Women in this society can not control their own lives and she also talks about the ultimate degradation of genital mutilation.

Highly recommended read.

Many thanks for my advance copy.

The author went up against the male supremacist government of Saudi Arabia, to fight for women being granted permission to drive. This is a country where women are not allowed to leave the home uncovered, and without a male relative escorting them. Hijab wearers are considered bad Muslims, because they aren't covered enough. The sight of an eyelash can lead men to sin, allegedly.

Women are oppressed in every society, in unique ways. Saudi Arabia is one of the most oppressive places to be female on earth.

The turnkey of this tale is the fact that Manal was a hardcore fundamentalist (against "bad" Muslims) until she grew up and learned about the greater world outside her room. She went from defending the system, to being a fierce critic and becoming a global leader in fighting for women's rights (and yes, she did see the irony of her life arc). She didn't set out to be an activist. She just wanted the right to get a driver's license and drive herself.

Recommended for everyone.

This is more than just a story about the right of women to drive a car it also gives women to have a voice and control in their own lives. In 2011 Manal al-Sharif, a young Saudi woman was detained and then put in prison for driving a car despite nothing in the country’s traffic law making it illegal. This is an amazing and moving story, which left me thinking how much of my life I take for granted. I want to thank the author for writing this book and educating me. Now at least I feel I have some understanding of Muslim life, culture and religion. Manal certainly had the confidence to persevere with what she believed was right even though other people did not agree or approve.
Women will be allowed to drive from next year on the proviso a male family member can still stop her from doing so and the religious police are officially not permitted to arrest people, any more. Repression of women continues in other ways. Every country has its rules and customs but Saudi ones appear to be more conservative and inflexible than most. The process of change will not happen overnight.
Even though I have a great interest in medical related matters, I still found the details of female circumcision very graphic. It is horrifying to know this ritual continues despite society’s best efforts to wipe it out.
Recently (http://www.theweek.co.uk/60339/nine-things-women-cant-do-in-saudi-arabia) a now banned senior cleric had made claims about the size of women’s brains and their ability to drive while distracted. Things like this are so outside of the world I live in and hard to understand that someone could really think like this.

I really enjoyed reading and learning the background etc to Muslim’s and their faith. It was also interesting in light of events over the last few years and the role IS radicalization plays. When Manal was at school students received lectures, specifically designed to arouse feelings of guilt or fear which indoctrinated them to the Muslim way of life. I also spared a thought to the large number of foreign women eg servants who continue to be contained in Saudi prisons.
This was a great biography and a very interesting read.

A powerful memoir about the Manal Al-Sharif's plight because she dared to "drive while female".

I've learnt a great deal about the Saudi Arabia. Ignorance is never bliss.

Best wishes to the Saudi women. I hope that newly lifted driving ban is only one of the many freedoms to come.

In 2011, Manal al-Sharif was imprisoned for nine days for "driving while female" after a video of her driving went viral on Youtube. While not against any statutory laws she was defying the strict religious customs that prevent women from having any independence.

In this wonderful account of her life Manal describes her upbringing in the holy city of Mecca and the religious teaching at school that taught hate of anything different and resulted in her adopting extremist radical views during her teenage years to the point where she destroyed her brothers tapes of western music (forbidden) and stopped drawing (drawing living things was also forbidden). She describes how restrictive life is for women as they can only be in the company of men they are related to (fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, grandfathers) so that women have died or given birth alone at home for want of a male relative to take them to hospital.

Manal's enlightenment came when she graduated University (a co-ed campus but one where girls sat in a separate room to boys and listened to their lectures) and got a job as a computer security consultant for the national oil company Saudi Aramco. Originally set up by the US, the company was sold to Saudi Arabia with the stipulation that women be allowed to continue to work there. Inside the company compound (where only non-Saudi women were allowed to live), Manal experienced a freer way of life at work. One where she could talk to men, take off her niqab, and where she was allowed to drive.

This book was a real eye-opener for me as Saudi Arabia seems to be one of the more modern Arab states but from Manal's account it feels like their treatment of women is still in the dark ages. Manal's spirit and her quest for better treatment for Saudi women comes through in her simply written and inspiring account. Manal is only able to write and publish this book because she no longer able to live in Saudi as a result of her courage in taking on the religious police and daring to drive.

Daring to Drive is a look inside the world of Islam and how women are treated in the radical Islamic state.
Growing up, Manal Al-Sharif accepted her Muslim life as it was give to her. As she grew up up, she participated in the ore conservative and radical sections of the religion thinking that it was the nly way she could reach salvation. Scared and looking for reasons for her pain, she enveloped the life she was given. But then she finished high school and she starts to change. She starts to see there is more for her than her religion has ever shown her/ She gets a job in a non-typical field and starts to see the freedoms she can have and still be Muslim. This culminates in her open protest by driving while female.
Female drivers are not illegal and she latches on to that but it is traditionally forbidden. Manal and thousands of women in the middle come together to drive and show the world that Saudi women driving will not be the world's end.
Al-Sharif's story is one of growth, passion and advocacy. The book chronicles more than just her driving, being arrested and the protest the women mount. This story is her life; the life of what Saudi women go through every day in the life of the radical Islamic State.
Both moving and saddening, Daring to Drive is a heroic story that reminds us that each of us can do a little something to make the world a better place, even if it just driving a car.

Daring to Drive: A gripping account of one woman's home-grown courage that will speak to the fighter in all of us by Manal Al-Sharif is a book I requested from NetGalley and the book publishers and the review is voluntary.
This book had my emotions everywhere. It is sad, heartbreaking, full of encouragement, hope, made me angry, happy, and many emotions in between. There are a lot of stories about many women in Saudi Arabia, from their early life on. I am a nurse and I had a friend that was a nurse in the ER there for three years and she told me horrendous stories involving the the abuse of the women, mostly from neglect, so this book really caught my eye. On World Music there was a song about this woman too.
Her bravery and her courage is to be commended esp. in a society that treats women with such contempt. A wonderful book. All women should read this!

An amazing autobiography of a young Muslim girl growing up, developing from an extremist muslim to an advocate for more freedom for women. It provides an insight as to how young girls are beaten and brainwashed into subservience by religious figures, teachers and sometimes family members. Being a straight A student provided opportunities few would experience, and also freedom that she had never known. A freedom that she wanted to share, regardless of the consequences.
Extremely well written, an unforgettable story which I highly recommend.

This book is a very brave account of a life constrained by the laws of one of the richest countries in the world, but one where women have virtually no rights. It is predominantly a memoir sharing the life of an ordinary Saudi woman who is trying to make things better for her fellow women in a country where anybody without a y chromosome is denied the freedoms that western women take for granted.
As a woman living in the UK I still find it amazing that basic rights of being able to open a bank account or rent a flat are withheld from my contemporaries in Saudi Arabia without the permission of her father or husband which leads them to be very vulnerable to abuse, and no surprise domestic violence is very common and only made illegal in 2013.
The history chapter of this book was fairly dull but a short and necessary introduction to the grand mosque in Mecca seizure in 1979 by Juhayman and the extremest Salafi ideology took hold in the Saudi kingdom in the years following.
One of the things that I found so interesting is that many of the rules that exist in Saudi Arabia such as driving whilst female, are not rules that actually exist written down anywhere but are custom. Custom is enforced by the religious police who's job it is to ensure that the religious laws and traditions are upheld. This consists of arresting people who do not dress or behave in what they consider the proper manner. And at the time of writing they where all powerful but we are told that they have had their powers contained a little since.
There is a particularly harrowing chapter detailing the circumcision preformed on Manal as a child. I always thought that this horrifying practice was an African phenomena but no, it exists in the Arab world too, but I think its practice is diminishing now, thank goodness.
I think the fact that Manal had family in Egypt and visited them frequently gave her insight into another way of life. Egypt although Muslim is far less conservative and woman are allowed to drive and have other basic rights that are disallowed the women in Saudi. Manual learned to drive during the year that she was working in America for her Saudi employer whilst she was there she took a driving test and obtained an internationally accepted driving license.
This is an important book both from a feminist and a world perspective and I think every woman should read it.

Manal Al-Sharif was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in her native Saudi Arabia. Her crime was “driving while female”. Although she had broken no actual law, the religious police ruled that women should not drive. Increasingly frustrated by the restrictions caused by not being allowed to drive, Manal Al-Sharif decided to challenge the ban and this book is a compelling and riveting account of how she did this. It’s also a fascinating memoir of her life in a society where women are considered “minors” all of their life and need a male guardian. It’s an incredible story, and the book is both engaging and illuminating about the restrictive society that Saudi Arabia remains to this day.

An amazing book written by an amazing, very strong, brave woman that should be read by every woman. From the very start I was gripped by Manal's story of her life, from childhood until soon after her mother died. This is not simply a book about her defying the ban to drive a vehicle on the public roads but explains the whole culture of Islamic life as seen from the feminine perspective. Manal explains so well the issues that the Islamic State and Saudi culture impose on society as well as describing some of the important calendar events. At all times, especially when explaining the controls that are enforced upon the females, she writes respectfully of her religion but still manages to report on the emotions that she has faced. The book gives excellent explanations to any terminology that may not be known to the reader. As I read this book I was given a background of Saudi history and also some of the other Islamic sects.
This book is beautifully written and makes me very glad that I never had to face such practices in order to live my life in peace; as a westerner it is hard to imagine the way of life where women are so subjugated.
Manal now has been given her an identity of her own she is now not someone's child, wife or mother she has her own persona without being known as owned by someone else.

Manal Al-Sharif is a courageous woman. Going up against decades of Saudi cultural norms and demanding her right to basic living conditions and standards, Al-Sharif's story is both highly interesting and a little bit heartbreaking.

There is a lot of confusion about Saudi Arabian reality in the western world, where the kingdom is viewed through rose tinted lenses and western governments feebly discuss 'human rights' while getting into bed with the kingdom for its commodities. The result is a damning human rights record in Saudi, with women scraping the bottom of the rights barrel. Al-Sahrif brings all of that information to light, using stories from her childhood to demonstrate what it really means to be a woman in Saudi and what life is really like for its citizens, from ingrained religious fundamentalism to violent abuse, limited child access rights for women and judgement at every turn.

This lady is brave- much braver than I could be. I hope, someday, she triumphs. In the meantime, every man who hates women and every person who hates Islam could do with reading this to learn some crucial lessons about why the world is the way it is- and whose fault that is.

What can I say? Manal al Sharif is a heroine. She has rocketed to the top of my list of people I want to go for coffee with.
As the blurb tells us, this memoir tells us of Manal's unexpected brush with fame/infamy when she became involved in the campaign to allow women to drive in Saudi Arabia. I am fairly sure if I asked any of my friends here in the U.K. they would say that it is against the law for women to drive in SA. Except it isn't. Against the law that is. It is frowned upon and against the strict religious rules that are imposed in the kingdom but it isn't illegal.
Manal decided to drive through the streets of Jeddah with a friend and her brother and to film their encounter in order to encourage other women to join the day of action they had planned in a months time.
Manal was pulled over, interviewed and released only to be arrested and jailed the next day, charged with the crime 'driving while female'
I am a British non driving woman but living in a secular democracy there are no rules on who I can be in a car with, or who I can be all be alone with and what public transport I can use. Put simply I have no idea how lucky I am and I have a great deal less of a need to drive than Manal does where women face being shouted at, spat at or attacked for walking down the street.
Quite apart from the driving issue, Manal shines a light on how the Kingdom of SA operates, how her religion affects the way they live and the differences beteeen being a Saudi male and female. These were all things I thought I knew but when you are invited into a family in the way Manal brings her into hers, then you really begin to understand and empathise with someone else's struggles. The relationships Manal had with her parents was wonderful to see, especially how her father was able to move with the times and accept her choices.
It seems silly but despite the much more serious and important subject matter, one of the most interesting parts for me was when Manal explained what head coverings Muslim women wear, and why they may choose one option or another. A good book always inspires me to Google something or someone. I have now watched Manal's TED talk, seen the video of her driving and visited the Women2Drive website.
All in all this book is incredibly inspiring, and has a lot to tell us in the west about embracing diversity while also flying the flag for our sisters rights in the Middle East. It is a moving family tale, and a reminder to be thankful for every freedom we have.

Thanks to 'Simon & Schuster' and Netgalley I was able to read "Daring to drive. A Saudi Woman's Awakening"
and I feel so excited to share with you my thoughts on this book that will be published in June 13th this year.

Manal al Sharif

is a woman activist that was named by "Time" magazine 'one of its 100 most influential people of the year. The Oslo Freedom Forum invited her to speak at the annual gathering of human rights activist from around the world at which she received the first ever Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent. A woman that started campaign called 'I Am Lama' Which helped pass the first Saudi code against domestic violence. A woman I would know nothing about if not this book.

About the book:

I expected a book about woman that fights for women driving a car in Saudi Arabia. I thought it will be some kind of political book that talks about woman's right to drive in Saudi Arabia and nothing much more than that. However, I was so wrong.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I loved this book. It tells as story of a girl that was brought up in the country ruled by strict religious rules. In the country where religious police check if its citizens follow cultural and religious rules and laws. The country where women need their male guardian to apply for a school, rent a flat or even travel and shop.
A woman that used to call herself 's radical Islamist.

My thoughts:

I have been moved by the world behind the walls and veils of every girl or woman in Saudi Arabia. I have been shocked and inspired by Sharif's strength and willingness to help others. In the society strictly controlled by the Salafi school of thought, the strictest that exists in Islam (not accepted by many other Muslims) being a woman that stand for herself is an act to amazing courage.

I watched this TED Talk and thought you would find it interesting.

Manal al-Sharif: A Saudi woman who dared to drive
http://go.ted.com/OUpT8g

ARC received from: Netgalley

Rating: 5*

One-Sentence Summary: Growing up as a woman in Saudi Arabia

Review: This book gave a fascinating insight into what of the most paradoxical countries in the world - on the one hand there are Saudis competing who can drive the most expensive car and buying into all kinds of Western ideals, on the other hand they won't even recognise women as being their own person and not in need of a male "guardian" to speak for them.

I have no shame in admitting that I didn't know too much about Saudi Arabia. What I knew was a balance of the stereotyping I hear in the media and a friend trying to tell me it's not as oppressive there as the media makes out any more. I think the media got it right for once!

One of the most fascinating things for me was learning that Saudi Arabia went the opposite way to nearly every other country out there: instead of becoming more open and less oppressive in the mid-end 90's, it actually became more dictatorial and it was the younger generation that forced religious extremism on their parents.

Manal al-Sharif gives a very honest description of what she went through as a child from regular beatings from her father to female circumcision. Her change from religious extremism to fighting for women's rights was really fascinating to read. Hardly any of us can fathom how anyone could get imprisoned for the crime of being a woman driver. A real eye-opener and reinforced the belief that even if could travel there (which I can't), I wouldn't want to.