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SOJOURN IN SAUDI ARABIA -- THE STORY OF THREE YEARS IN THE LAND OF CADILLACS AND WALLS, Brunhilde Hacker, hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, stated first edition, illustrated, 1963. BOOK CONDITION: very good. The text block and illustrations are in fine condition with no dogears, tears, or marks. There is no book plate nor signature of prior owner. Small smudge on the last free endpaper. Not a remainder or library book. The green cloth boards are in good condition (some shelf rubbing on bottom and top edges, bumped spine, small spots on back cover). The dust jacket is in good condition (chipping and crinkling of top and bottom edge, tears at spine top and bottom, some discolored areas). 8 ¼ x 5 ½, 277 pages, 16 ounces XX [from the inner flaps] Like the tremendous Arabian Nights genie who rose from a tiny oil lamp to perform great wonders, oil has risen out of Saudi Arabia's barren deserts and strewn this ancient Mohammedan country with unlikely vestiges of Western technical modernization. The clash between a primitive yesterday and a modern today, where there has been no intervening development time, is sometimes funny, sometimes pathetic, sometimes appalling, but always fascinating. In the three years Brunhilde Hacker spent in Saudi Arabia, she grasped all the flavor of this strange country, where the miserable indigent breathe on the necks of the free-spending nouveaux riches, where ancient penal codes still keep crime to a minimum, where most of the people are nomads, and where Allah watches over rich and poor alike. Miss Hacker's adventure in the land of "Cadillacs and walls" began in 1954, when she took a position as the only female secretary in the desert capital Riyadh, the stronghold of the Wahabites, the most conservative Moslems. An avid devotee of sun and heat, frail-looking Miss Hacker fought for the chance to get a job in a. part of the world which commonly inflicts heat prostration on foreigners. In a land where women never go about unveiled, and where they are commonly exchanged for camels, Miss Hacker managed by one means or another to travel around the fabled cities of Jidda and Riyadh, soaking up all the natural and human color to be found. You'll delight in her vivid descriptions of the Arabian suqs or - bazaars, at her anecdotes of Arabian train passengers who insist on riding free, or at least try to argue the conductor down to half-fare, and at her eye-opening accounts of personal visits to the homes of sheiks and queens. More than a competently written travelogue, Miss Hacker's book is a portrait of an exciting, vibrant, ambitious woman and the world she experienced. [About the Author] BORN in Germany, Brunhilde Hacker received a German and English education. The American idiom which the reader will detect in her writing was acquired after World War Il, when she worked for several American organizations, including a five-year period as teacher and librarian in American schools in Germany. When travel conditions at the end of 1956 prevented her from returning to her exciting position as secretary, interpreter, and librarian to the Saudi Arabian government's Petroleum Consultant, she settled for a comparable position with the largest American Oil Company in Tripoli, Libya. Seller Inventory # 001913
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