The girls of Riyadh are young, attractive, and living by Saudi Arabia’s strict cultural traditions. Well, not quite. In between sneaking out behind their parents’ backs, dating, shopping, watching American TV, and having fun, they’re still trying to be good little Muslim girls. That is, pleasing their families and their men. But can you be a twenty-first-century girl and a Saudi girl?

RAJAA AL-SANEA is a Saudi writer and endodontist, born in Riyadh in 1981 to a family of doctors. She received her bachelor’s degree in Dentistry from King Saud University in 2005, and her master’s in oral sciences from University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry in 2008 on the King Abdullah scholarship. Upon publication, her novel Girls of Riyadh was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia, as the depiction of infidelity, pre-marital relations, and homosexuality was seen as inflammatory material.