Interview

Zoë Ferraris answers questions about her first novel, Finding Nouf, the first in an amateur detective series set in Saudi Arabia.

First of all, I think people would like to know your connection to Saudi Arabia, so they don't think you're making this all up.

Well, actually, I made it up. But there's also a lot of real Saudi Arabia in the book.

When I was nineteen, I got married to a Saudi-Palestinian Bedouin. We met in San Francisco, and I fell completely in love with him. He was hilarious and brilliant and over-the-top zany. He had come to America to study English. He told his parents that once he was fluent, he would go back to Jeddah. So he never became fluent. Learning English – actually, he called it "Languish" – was just going to have to take forever.  

We got married and had a daughter. The day she was born, he decided that we had to visit his family in Jeddah. Just a short visit, you know, to show off his new wife and kid. We wound up staying for almost a year. It turns out that you can't just visit for a week or two. You have to stay until his mother stops having heart episodes every time you go to the airport.


So you didn't get along with your mother-in-law?

Not after she convinced me that a liberal application of henna could eliminate zits on your face forever. Thank god ...