Burned Alive A Victim of the Laws of Men by Souad (Judith S. Armbruster, tr.) (Great Britain: Bantam Press, 2004. 333 pages.)

Abstract

Burned Alive is the true story of Souad, a young Palestinian woman who
survived an attempted honor killing carried out by her brother-in-law. This
autobiography, documented by Marie-Thérèse Cuny and translated from
the French by Judith S. Armbruster, is narrated in such a way that the readers
can develop a familiarity with the complicated dimension of gender
roles, the prevalence of asymmetrical standards of male and female morality in misogynistic societies, and their impact on women. The plot develops
in a way designed to inform the reader that honor killing, although outwardly
practiced as a customary punishment for an illicit sexual relationship,
is, in reality, a brutal form of female suppression.
The book, divided into five parts, covers two different stages of Souad’s
life. Now forty-five, the first phase of her life took place in a small West
Bank village where, at the age of eighteen, she experienced the atrocity of
an attempted honor killing because she had had premarital sexual relationships
with a man. Through an aid worker named Jacqueline, Souad miraculously
survived and was moved to Europe, where she began the second
phase of her life. She now lives with a loving husband and three children,
following her tryst with death, twenty-four operations, and innumerable
excruciatingly painful recovery procedures ...