The story of one woman's passionate odyssey and sophisticated fantasy of Arabia, ancient and modern.

The distinguished Middle Eastern author Raja Alem grew up in Mecca at a time when the holy city was on the cusp of transformation from medieval to modern. In this vanished Mecca, vividly brought to life again in ""My Thousand and One Nights"", women hold center stage - especially Jummo, the wildly passionate daughter of the Water Carriers' Sheik. This faraway time and setting become compellingly real through the intimate drama of Jummo's life, the tragic arc of her affair with her childhood sweetheart and her lifelong love for the mysterious Sidi Wadhana, a more-than-human emissary from the Netherworld. Jummo's world, veiled and invisible to outsiders until this telling of her story, has the feel of the true center of an Arabia that has come to us in many exotic and threatening guises. ""Jummo's Mecca"" is a different world, with different narrative strategies, but her dramatic problems are universal: how lethal is love, how dangerous is woman? And how sensual is the yearning for immortality?

November 1979. Violence has broken out in the holiest site of Islam after a charismatic rebel and his devoted followers have announced the coming of the Mahdi and seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Among the insurgents is a young woman, Sarab, disguised as a man. As the horror and chaos of the siege reach their peak, she escapes and encounters a French officer from the opposing side. They form an unexpected bond, as hostility turns to attraction, but the violence of both of their pasts will return to haunt them. Award-winning writer Raja Alem's extraordinary narrative stretches from Saudi Arabia's Najd desert to the heart of Paris. In her typical bold and captivating style, this most unusual of love stories unpicks faith and fanaticism, alienation and redemption, and ultimately what it means to be human.