Download or read book Tolstoy in Riyadh written by Chris Cryer and published by Daniel & Daniel Publishers. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1982, Chris Cryer spent a year in Saudi Arabia, teaching English to women at King Saud University. Accompanied by her fourteen-year-old son, and a few books by and about Leo Tolstoy, Chris found a sense of connection where she least expected it. The fast-moving, slightly comic, always fascinating adventure pulls us directly into the journey. We come to respect and love the mother-son duo for their unprejudiced outlook and their cool-headed survival of matawas (moral police), strict laws, and customs. This book is one of very few based on true events, written from the inside out, that show the Arab side in the Islamic world, a place long held in mystery under the dark images of Western media. The author presents the Saudi culture at that time with a sensitivity to their need to preserve values and traditions in the face of modernity.