Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Beautiful, stunning just a wonderful piece of writing. I found myself loving this book. I really enjoyed read it.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for gifting me a copy,

A interesting read.

A point of view of a muslim feminist was brilliant as in all honesty I have never read such books before. It really outlined some good cultural and religious issues which should be talked about in books alot more.

I would recommend this to everyone not just the muslim female population.

A great was to look into the culture, religion and female perspective of a female that is not usually shown in the media.

Absolutely beautifully written and moving; I've since purchased it and recommended it to several people.

For some reason I’ve been drawn to reading a number of memoirs recently. I have been really enjoying having an insight into someones alien life to mine. I picked this book up and wow was it powerful, I was immediately sucked in and did not want it to end.It brought up larger issues and was a timely read for me considering the current events. Great book, highly recommend.

Through My Past is a Foreign Country, Zeba Talkhani is able to offer a true empathetic connection for those of us who have had our autonomy wrangled away, in any way big or small, while in the same breath providing us insight and knowledge without denigration. Her issues, and the battles she faces through the course of this story, are both familial and political. She fights for her own right to choose, to learn, to forge her own path as an individual woman, and this battle is fought against her own family as well as against the greater patriarchy and the odds that are, undeniably, unevenly stacked. Journeying through Talkhani’s past alongside her is an emotionally-wringing narrative as well as a lesson in religion and geopolitics. My Past is a Foreign Country is an intimate memoir with a grand and important scope flooded with empathy and knowledge. I cannot praise it highly enough.

A gorgeous read a memoir of the life of an Indian girl growing up in Saudi Arabia.Her global search for her identity her place in the world.#netgalley#hodderstoughton.

Some books you read to find yourself, but Zeba Talkhani's utterly majestic memoir was as far from my life as I possibly could have gotten. She traversed the globe - stepped as far out of the box of her pre-determined life as she possibly could have gotten - to find a way of life that she wanted to live. It is an awe-inspiring, brave, utterly exciting tale that will broaden the breadths of my own life forever.

Zeba Talkhani is a 27 year old Indian woman, who grew up in the ex-pat community of Saudi Arabia.

This book is her brutally honest memoir of her journey to find freedom as a feminist Muslim woman, through her experiences in India, Saudi Arabia, Germany and the UK.

This is a book about a young Muslim woman trying to establish her own feminist identity within the patriarchy of her religion and family.
She starts by using her earliest memories of her relationship with her mother to explain her confusion at the behaviour of the women close to her.

Zeba then goes on to detail her experiences at school; her fight to be allowed to study at university, particularly since this meant living away from home; her studies in Germany; her studies in England; and finally working and trying to meet a suitable husband.

Zeba's home life was further complicated by the fact that she suffered from alopecia, which her mother found extremely difficult to handle. In a community where marriageability is judged primarily on appearance, Zeba's hair loss placed a great strain on her close family's relationship with their friends and neighbours and rumours about her condition led to some, quite frankly, appalling behaviour on the part of her extended family.

All through this book, Zeba explains how she has had to fight against the expectations placed upon her by the patriarchal dictates of the Muslim community, to establish herself as a self-reliant young woman.
Her different experiences have led her to educate herself about living a feminist life within Islam, which has not been a very easy thing to do! Considering she is still a very young woman, I have to admire how far she has come at such a young age.

Although, she has been privileged in some ways, by having a family who have learnt to respect her wishes, she tells of the experiences of her less fortunate young women friends and relatives and this makes for grim reading.

One of the things, I found most interesting is that Zeba explains that in Saudi Arabia she felt too dark-skinned and a foreigner unable to speak Arabic; whilst, in India, she still felt an outsider, as a minority Muslim, so she felt a foreigner there too. However, she does consider Saudi Arabia to be her home and she has much love for this country - despite the assumption from many people believing she must have hated her time under the strict regime imposed upon Muslims in that country. It was very interesting to read about the different experiences Zeba had in Saudi Arabia, compared to the Saudi women, as an ex-pat resident - albeit still a Muslim.

Zeba has done a lot of thinking about her place in life for such a young woman. She has reached some very mature conclusions about why Muslim women living under a strict patriarchy allow the restrictions placed upon them to continue - after all, many of the most unpleasant consequences of being a young Muslim woman are perpetuated by older women.

I find this situation very difficult to come to terms with, and having a daughter myself, only want her to have everything good in her life and to protect her from the bad.

Zeba has formulated that older Muslim women are in fact traumatized by their own experiences as young women and are therefore, too afraid to stand up to the patriarchy. She reasons that her own mother struggled with the expectations placed on her to behave in a particular way as a wife and mother, which made it impossible for her to behave as she would have wished.
I think there is some truth in this, but I wonder if she will be quite as philosophical about it when she has her own children - especially if she has daughters.

This book is absolutely fascinating. I have not read anything quite like it before and could not put it down. In short, this is a book which should be read by everyone - especially young women.

Zeba has suffered from some pretty traumatic experiences in her young life and the arrogant behaviour she has been exposed to is very difficult to read about. However, she has been very lucky as a young Muslim woman in a lot of ways and she has been able to get to a place where she is happy with her own identity and able to live the life she wants to lead. She is a fine role model.

This is an important and brutally honest book.
I understand that her honesty has not gone down well with some members of her family - not surprising considering the way some of them have behaved in the past.
I admire Zeba's stance that she has only detailed the parts of her life she remembers quite clearly as affecting her deeply, without speculating on the intentions of those involved, but in many cases you can assume that their intentions were far from good. This is something they will have to come to terms with themselves and I can imagine they are not happy about having their own shortcomings made public.
I can only say that they should use this memoir as a basis from improving their own hurtful behaviour (and writing scathing comments in a review of this book on Amazon, will hardly gain them any sympathy from someone who has read the contents of these pages).

I have been pleasantly surprised about the crop of excellent books by young Muslim women around at the moment, and this is definitely one of them. Long may this continue.

Zebra Talkhani writes this interesting and balanced account of growing up in Saudi Arabia and India and of her first adult years in the UK. I was initially quite gripped by her story, especially as I knew nothing about Saudi Arabia. Her writing is clear and light and the story moved quickly. The relationship with her mother is particularly nuanced and intriguing. She writes about Islam, as a practising Muslim, in a very thought-provoking way.

However weaknesses with the writing do emerge. She is not skilled at conveying a sense of either place or character. Most of the people in the book remain just names by that end, with no sense of who they are as people. Similarly you would struggle to distinguish Jeddah from Cambridge from the attention given to any sense of place or how this impacts identity. Finally, I got a little fed up of the writer's constant references to "the patriarchy" which gave the work a slightly school essay type feel at times. This is an interesting memoir and I would read more from Talkhani as she continues to improve as a writer. .

Extremely readable and utterly honest, I loved this portrayal of growing up as a Muslim Indian girl in Saudi Arabia. That phrase alone might make you wonder how she survived but, as Zeba herself says, we can only judge by hearsay - this book sets the record straight and explains so much about what it means to want to be yourself, while adhering to a religion and way of life that is precious to you - and that it can be done. Hard to believe she's only 27, I can see a glittering career ahead.

For some reason I’ve been drawn to reading a number of memoirs recently. I’m not sure if this is just a coincidence or if it’s because I’m especially drawn to real stories of lives so different from my own. Certainly (on the surface) Zeba Talkhani’s history is very distant from my own upbringing and path in life. She grew up as a Muslim girl of Indian descent in Saudi Arabia before moving to study in India, Germany and England. Yet I came to feel such a strong sense of kinship with her over the course of reading her powerful and inspiring memoir “My Past is a Foreign Country”. I connected strongly to her sensibility in a number of ways from a small detail like her love for the wonderful film ‘Violette’ or larger issues such as how physical distance from our homelands has allowed us a broader perspective on our upbringing and cultures. But, aside from the ways I personally connected to this book, I felt an overall admiration and respect for the development of her identity as a proud feminist, Muslim and intellectual.

Talkhani describes her childhood in Jeddah and the expectations placed upon her there as a girl. From an early age she was sensitive to the fact men and women were treated differently. She naturally questioned this and other aspects of the predominantly patriarchal society but “My questioning was considered a kind of lewdness.” However, she was unwilling to fully cede to the dictation of this social order and continued to query the many written and unwritten rules governing how women were meant to conduct themselves. Of course, it’d be a simplification to present Saudi Arabia only as a place where there is an issue with sexism. Crucially, Talkhani highlights the way in which this region is in some ways more progressive in its attitudes towards women. She identifies how “The problem wasn’t so much my culture, but the universal reverence we placed on men of faith, and the reputation of men in general.” What she identifies are the power structures that are in place which reinforce the patriarchy and how this manifests in different ways throughout the world regardless of the nation or predominant religion. That’s not to excuse the cases of egregious sexism she highlights in particular places, but to point out that they spring out of common issues to do with male dominated societies.

It’s really moving the way Talkhani charts how she grows and learns as an individual. A crucial issue she struggled with in her adolescence and adult life is with hair loss. This caused many more issues for her as a young woman than it would for men – especially because of the emphasis her family and community placed upon marriage and finding a suitable husband. Her condition challenged her sense of self-worth when being judged by those around her but it’s heartening to read how she developed an inner-resolve and certainty of self: “Investing in my sense of self and divorcing it from the perceptions of others not only kept me afloat as a teenager but it protected me from making life-altering choices from a place of insecurity. I knew my value and I wasn’t going to waste my precious time enabling fragile, toxic masculinity.” This is such an inspiring message for anyone who is vulnerable to letting such judgements defeat them.

It’s interesting how throughout her life Talkhani has been part of a minority whether it was living with her Indian heritage in Saudi Arabia, as a Muslim in India and as both these things in Europe. While this naturally led her to feeling ostracised at times it also allowed her to achieve a unique perspective on the assumptions and ideologies which guided the different societies she lived in. It’s given her an insight into the way in which societies differently discriminate against people based upon their gender, faith, race or nationality. This occurs in both subtle and overt ways whether it’s meeting potential suitors or being part of a predominantly white book group, but are all related to how different groups can have parochial views about those who are different. What’s truly admirable is the way Talkhani doesn’t allow the judgement of others affect her personally because “Nothing was personal, it was just how the patriarchy worked.” She comes to this conclusion partly by drawing upon many different writers and philosophers from Sylvia Plath to Simone de Beauvoir to better inform and frame her understanding of the world. After a long challenging journey she understands that it’s only her opinion of herself that matters. She articulates this beautifully in the later parts of the book as well as sympathetically describing issues of insecurity she still wrestles with.

One of the most striking points of connection I felt with the author was when she conveys in her recollections how she’d repeatedly hide her vulnerability. At a few different points in her life she describes suppressing tears or closing down rather than expressing sadness or anger to those around her (even if people close to her recognize she’s in pain and are trying to comfort her.) It’s a pernicious sort of defence mechanism whereby feelings are internalized and it ironically blocks us off from the support of people who love us when we need them the most. Talkhani movingly describes how she learns to open up and express herself more. This adds to how this memoir demonstrates an admirable maturity. Her vital perspective contains so much wisdom and insight for anyone who has felt marginalized or been pressured to conform to the status quo.

Zeba Talkhani narrates her life growing up as a Muslim in Saudi Arabia, and her years of study in Germany and the UK, and recounts her struggle to be a feminist within a strict patriarchal culture.

I thought it was an interesting read. The struggles that women face seem to be universal, no matter what religion you are or where you live: the unattainable beauty ideals, the pressure to get married, and the fact that equality for women seems to be lip service in many cases because when it comes down to it, we aren't respected and valued by society much at all. For all of this, there are moments of triumph, acceptance, and real happiness within the book and these are heartwarming. Well worth a read.

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers, Hodder & Stoughton / Sceptre, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

A very different insight into the life of a Indian Muslim woman brought up in Saudi Arabia, who spent time living, and then studying, in India, and then Europe.
I admit that before I started reading the book I had my own prejudices; that as an Indian girl living in Saudi, Zeba must have had an horrendous time. I made assumptions that her family would have been treated badly, and that as a woman, she would have been even more so. I was so pleased to read Zeba’s account that, whilst everything was not perfect for her, life was not what many, including myself, expect of Saudi Arabia.
Zeba is an amazing and strong woman, she tells her story so far so passionately. She does not just accept anything, her quest for knowledge is unending whether it is at an early age asking questions of Islam, when no one else dare do so, or not accepting the standards of beauty or more importantly the patriarchal norms in society. Zeba is an inspirational woman.
Thanks to NetGalley for a Kindle copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A powerful read is a huge understatement, this book fills you with hope and Zeba is such an inspiration to every generation, women and men. More books like this are needed , I can’t emphasise this enough. Thank you so much for sharing your story Zeba. I hope it inspires so many people as much as it did me.


Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Such a heartfelt, honest memoir, MY PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY truly stole my heart. It’s such a timely book and I’ve learnt so much about India and Saudi and how it feels to be a Muslim living in Britain. Zeba Talkhani’s exploration of her relationship with her parents, and how she finds her place living within (but not accepting) the patriarchy truly brought me peace - thank you for writing and publishing such an astonishing book.