Dreams of Trespass · Tales of a Harem Girlhood

**This "wonderful and enchanting" memoir tells the revelatory true story of one Muslim girl's life in her family's French Moroccan harem, set against the backdrop of World War II ( *The New York Times Book Review* ).**

"I was born in a harem in 1940 in Fez, Morocco . . . "

So begins Fatima Mernissi in this illuminating narrative of a childhood behind the iron gates of a domestic harem. In *Dreams of Trespass* , Mernissi weaves her own memories with the dreams and memories of the women who surrounded her in the courtyard of her youth -- women who, without access to the world outside, recreated it from sheer imagination.

A beautifully written account of a girl confronting the mysteries of time and place, gender and sex, *Dreams of Trespass* illuminates what it was like to be a modern Muslim woman in a place steeped in tradition.