\u00a0<\/span>I<\/span> had recently <\/span>been reading Mantel\u2019s third novel, <\/span>Eight Months on <\/span><\/i>Ghazzah<\/span><\/i> Street<\/span><\/i><\/a> (London: Viking, 1988)<\/span>, <\/span>which is <\/span>set in Jeddah<\/span>, Saudi Arabia,<\/span> in 1984-85, <\/span>and tells the story of Frances Shore, the <\/span>unhappily married <\/span>cartographer wife of a civil enginee<\/span>r<\/span> on an expatriate <\/span>work <\/span>contract in the Kingdom<\/span>. <\/span>The novel<\/span> is perhaps the best evocation of 1980s Saudi Arabia written by a woman in English<\/span>, and carefully <\/span>reconstructs the oppressive, punitive <\/span>environment that she encounters<\/span>.<\/span> A mapmaker stranded in a city without signs, Frances Shore observes that <\/span>pavements in Jeddah exist <\/span>to stop cars crashing into buildings, and not for the benefit of pedestrians. Her <\/span>large <\/span>apartment on <\/span>Ghazzah<\/span> Street has windows with views of blank compound walls, and <\/span>she can only glimpse a view of the sea by climbing to the roof. <\/span>Denied the opportunity to work or drive, Fra<\/span>nces Shore reads her way through <\/span>all<\/span> the<\/span> detective novels<\/span> she can find<\/span>, while keeping a diary of her claustrop<\/span>hobic life and trying to reconstruct the lives of others around her. It is a compellingly atmospheric novel.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n W<\/span>hen I <\/span>recently went to<\/span> Saudi Arabia for a short <\/span>visit<\/span>, I had to go and find <\/span>Ghazzah<\/span> Street, and see <\/span>the place that Mantel had reimagined<\/span> in her fiction<\/span> for myself. <\/span>Within 72 hours of setting foot in <\/span>the Kingdom<\/span>, I was there, and a spot of surreptitious literary <\/span>detective work (and <\/span>pilgrimage<\/span>)<\/span> had begun.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>So here is <\/span>Ghazzah<\/span> Street, 9 blocks in from the sea, in <\/span>Hamra<\/span>h<\/span> in Jeddah<\/span>\u2019s downtown<\/span>, just off <\/span>Shari\u2019eh<\/span> Falasteen<\/span> (Palestine Street)<\/span>. Several of the buildings look plausible as the <\/span>likely<\/span> home of Frances Shore in the novel -which thinly fictionalised the <\/span>first apartment<\/span> Mantel<\/span> actually lived in. <\/span>Much has changed \u2013 <\/span>Ghazzah<\/span> Street now has a swanky business hotel, Palestine Street is beautifully pedestrianised, and women are allowed to drive \u2013 <\/span>but parts of the built environment dating from the 1970s and 1980s are exactly as Mantel would have encountered and thinly fictionalised in the novel. <\/span>In fact, Mantel spent not eight months in Jeddah, but<\/span> stuck it out for<\/span> four years, in three different addresses<\/span> in Jeddah and one outside of the city, accompanying her geologist husband<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Mantel hated her time in Saudi Arabia and to the best of my knowledge, has never been back. And yet, it was those four years, living in the most gender repressive society on earth, that was the crucible that forged her as a writer. She had time to write, as denied the ability to work or drive, she could <\/span>do <\/span>little else. <\/span>Like her fictional character Frances Shore, Mantel read her way through the British Council Library\u2019s collection of detective fiction, and similarly, kept a diary of her day to day life. <\/span>She arrived as a housewife and left as a professional writer, with two novels under her belt, and the material – her Jeddah diaries – for her third, <\/span>Eight Months on <\/span><\/i>Ghazzah<\/span><\/i> Street<\/span><\/i>, ready to<\/span> go. She worked through her material and wrote<\/span> the novel back home in England during the winter o<\/span>f<\/span> 1986<\/span>, in a world that <\/span>\u2018always seemed to <\/span>be dark\u2019<\/span><\/a>. Even before the novel was published, <\/span>Mantel\u2019s Jeddah material <\/span>was <\/span>winning awards: her first literary prize was as the first ever recipient of the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for Travel Writing (1987) for a piece on Jeddah.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>So<\/span>, i<\/span>f you<\/span> a<\/span>re thinking of the place that turned Hilary Mantel from a geologist\u2019s wife <\/span>into<\/span> an award<\/span>–<\/span>winning novelist, look to Jeddah<\/span>, and not just for the inspiration for <\/span>Eight Months on <\/span><\/i>Ghazzah<\/span><\/i> Street. <\/span><\/i>S<\/span>urely, there could have been no better preparation for writing about absolute male patriarchy<\/span> and the divine right of kings<\/span> in Tudor England than having lived in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia<\/span>?<\/span> Perhaps e<\/span>ven more ironically, Mantel<\/span> now <\/span>has a readership within the Kingdom: <\/span>Wolf Hall<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Bring up the Bodies<\/span><\/i> are both<\/span> openly sold and read <\/span>there<\/span>, as my <\/span>own <\/span>visit to <\/span>Jarir<\/span> Books, Jeddah\u2019s largest physical and online book retailer, <\/span>located just a few kilometres away from <\/span>Ghazzah<\/span> Street, <\/span>proved.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shafquat Towheed, Senior Lecturer in English Hilary Mantel has been lauded for reviving the fortunes of the historical novel in English, for being the first woman writer to have won the Booker Prize twice (2009, 2012), and for selling over … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/general-book-cover-1-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Ghazzah-St-011-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Ghazzah-St-3-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n