"New York University professor Mona Mikhail's new collection of essays casts a wide net over literature, film, popular culture, and the law in order to investigate the living, often rapidly changing, reality of Arab women and their societies. Whether she examines Egyptian wedding customs, contemporary rewritings of the Shahrazad story, or women in North African novels, Mikhail sheds valuable light on the role of Arab women within Islam and within the Arab world."--BOOK JACKET.