Like all successful writers Jean Sasson is a voracious reader.  Almost as soon as she knew her alphabet she would read everything she could lay her hands on—even at family meals her head was deep in a book.

She grew up in a small town in Alabama and by the beginning of her teens had read every book in the school library.  At fourteen she bought her very own first book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer—an unusual choice for a girl from the Deep South. She wanted a good read and she wanted value for money, so she searched the bookshop and bought the book with the most pages.

At school Mrs. Sam Jackson, her beloved literature teacher, soon noticed Jean’s preoccupation and took it upon herself to make weekly trips to a nearby college library to exchange a selection of books to satisfy Jean’s appetite.

And today? When not absorbed in writing or the business of being a celebrated author, she reads and reads, maybe a book a day—literary success has enabled her to buy many books; no longer selected by the number of pages.

Her literary tastes are widely varied, and she has a long list of favorites.  Heading that list is Sir Winston Churchill, the prolific writer and leader of Britain in the dark years of World War II. Other historic figures, like Napoleon Bonaparte and T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), satisfy her two literary loves, history and travel.

The works of Gertrude Bell, Freya Stark and Sir Richard Burton opened her mind’s eye to the fascinations and mysteries of the Middle East . . . and those first musings led to her success story.

No longer content to simply read about this magical part of the world, Jean, armed with hospital administrative and office skills in addition to her literary thirst, sought and found the ideal opportunity to gain first hand knowledge—knowledge of that closed and mysterious land, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In 1978 she was selected to work at the most prestigious royal hospital in the Middle East, The King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in the Saudi capital Riyadh. There her talents blossomed.  She became the Administrative Coordinator of Medical Affairs and personal assistant to the hospital medical and executive director, Dr Nizar Feteih. Through him she was introduced to various Saudi royals, including King Khalid and his Crown Prince Fah’d, who succeeded as King on Khalid’s death in 1982.  In 1983, a close friendship between Jean and another royal, Princess Sultana, was forged and years later, based on that friendship, Jean was able to write her widely acclaimed Princess Trilogy.

Jean worked for four years at the King  Faisal Hospital and during that time met the man she was to marry, Peter Sasson, an international man who came from an unusual background.  Peter Sasson was a British citizen born in Egypt to an Italian/British father and Yugoslav mother.  After leaving the hospital in 1982, Jean remained in Saudi Arabia and on her husband’s sponsorship for another ten years.

During those years she devoted herself to activities that would form the bedrock of her career as a writer when she returned to America.  She met and made friends with Arab women from throughout the Middle East. During her travels there, she was saddened by the women's all-too-common tales. She heard the same stories repeated, of injustices and repression at the hands of not only their menfolk but also the state; of how nearly all Arab countries regarded women as second-class citizens, and of how women lacked a voice.

She also became concerned with the fate of the many animals that were abandoned by their expatriate owners when they left the Kingdom.  Pets, which were no match for the bands of feral dogs and goats that roamed the streets and rubble of Riyadh, needed a champion.  Jean helped set up a neighborhood rescue organization which she hopes exists even now.

Her marriage to Peter lasted eight years but they parted on excellent terms.  She finally left Riyadh in 1992.

She found herself as a freelance writer in war-torn Lebanon, and in Kuwait before and after the First Gulf War.  She used the material she gathered about Kuwaitis on the day of the Iraqi invasion, to write her runaway best seller The Rape of Kuwait.

In 1998 she wrangled an invitation from Saddam Hussein to visit Iraq. There, she saw for herself the privations being suffered by those most vulnerable… the women and children; deprivations not just at the hands of Saddam Hussein but also those caused by the sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

Her bestselling book, Mayada, Daughter of Iraq was a result of that trip.

After her writing career was launched, with customary, almost obsessive, zeal, Jean set off again.  With just her notes, computer and memories she shut herself in her house in Atlanta, Georgia and wrote book after book. The most successful was the Princess Trilogy, a series of books about her friend, Princess Sultana al-Sa’ud.

The list of Jean’s published books:

• The Rape of Kuwait (1991)
• Princess:  A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia (1992, updated in 2011)
• Princess Sultana’s Daughters (1994, updated 2011)
• Princess Sultana’s Circle (2000, updated 2011)
• Ester’s Child (2001)
• Mayada, Daughter of Iraq (2003)
• Love in a Torn Land: Joanna of Kurdistan (2007)
• Growing Up bin Laden: Osama’s wife and son take us inside their secret world (2009)
• For the Love of  a Son: an Afghan woman’s quest for her stolen child (2010)

With a solid background of first hand experience and years of research, Jean Sasson became regarded as a Middle East expert, with many appearances on national television and feature articles in magazines.

Now we await Jean Sasson’s 10^th and 11^th books, one of which will be, American Chick in Arabia.