fantastic listen

narrator was great and the book is a joy to listen to. as an Iranian it is very important for me to get a better insight into our neighbours rather than listen to the sensationalist news media and government propaganda. This type of books are irreplaceable. highly recommended if you want to get a good view of this complex and intriguing society.

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4 people found this helpful

An excellent book

This is an excellent, well-researched book, which I felt gave an informative, balanced, insight into the rather mysterious Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
I must confess I knew very little about the country other than what I had gleaned in the press. This book certainly overturned an awful lot of my preconceptions and prejudices.
Although this is no rose-tinted view of the Kingdom,I felt the author cared about exposing the good & the bad (and sometimes the downright horrifying) in equal measures, with fairness and sympathy.
What the book does do is offer some historical and social background and puts recent events into context. I was left with the impression of having been offered a broad selection of points of view, from those of the ruling elite to those of the average citizen.
Robert Lacey knows how to tell a good story: the numerous, occasionally moving (and sometimes very funny) anecdotes that illustrate this book give the narrative immediacy. They also lend a certain lightness to this otherwise serious book and provide a glimpse of Saudi humour. It is an easy listen, made even more pleaseant by Andrew Wincott's reading - although I can't judge how good the Saudi accent is which he employs for certain of the anecdotes!

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8 people found this helpful

Very interesting.

Read even if you have no connection to the Middle East. Well portrayed non bias book.

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5 people found this helpful

Fascinating

An incredible introduction to the kingdom, compelling and informative. My sincere thanks to the author

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4 people found this helpful

Silly accent

The book seems well written and the narration is also good, when not quoting somebody. For the numerous quoted passages, a silly central-casting "Arabic" accent and delivery is adopted, putting me off. I had to pack it in after a few chapters. Shame.

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How the middle ages are influencing the world

A must read if you are interested in history, politics, news, or religion

Most of us know a little about Saudi Arabia, but it arrives disjointed and full of that moments concerns, this book tries to shows us the context and the linearity of some of the history of the Kingdom, what it represents and tries to present to the modern world.

This is a country where witchcraft is prosecuted while driving in the latest Ferrari, A country where the poor and the rich are ruled by religion in every aspect of their lives, a place where the tribal culture is mixed with religious law and creates very large inequities and breeds strange strands of fundamentalist religion that are infecting the world, and spreading far from their place of origin. A place where clerics believe the earth is flat, but rule on an astronaut's diet and prayer, A place where whips and blades are used to to punish by law while the government has probably acquired atomic weapons to fight war.

What this book achieves best is to delineate how the very recent history of Saudi Arabia has influenced our present and most likely our future by all kind of serendipitous events and unforeseeable consequences created by remedies to its internal problems and by the nature of its religious belief system and the power of its money.

But this is done while humanizing and presenting all kind of evidence and anecdotes of the forces at play not in a cold one sided narrative but with the balanced care of an author that cares and respects the subject of his pen.

!979 is the catalyst and the beginning of a strand of islam to emerge out of the Kingdom and to metastasize into many brands and branches throughout the world; this is the part of the story that is most interesting and best represented by this fascinating book and the main reason I would read it again, because I think in it hides so much of our developing history.


Andrew Wincott reading bring the book to life and is a pleasure that makes a good book better.

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8 people found this helpful

Opens the world of Saudi to the listener

Thoroughly enjoyed this and believe I have a greater understanding of this nation. We’ll worth reading or listening to, the narrator is particularly engaging.

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Good book but shame about narration

While the subject matter was very interesting I found myself so distracted by the slow, broken narration that I could not finish the book.

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4 people found this helpful

Ridiculous accent and tone

I bought this book as I already read The Kingdom. The content is extremely interesting, though sometimes long-winded. However what makes this audible really unpleasant to hear is the narrator voice and accent. When representing the speech of an Arabic person, it uses a ridiculous accent. It’s not a theatrical piece, it’s a book and it should be read in a neutral way. Not recommended!!

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