We all know this backward desert of Wahabism is terrible, but just how offensive it is to Western sensibilities, how hypocritical the royal family is to commit every sin in the Koran while inflicting this puritanical code on its citizens, and how corrupt this combination of hypocrisy and wealth can be is -- painfully -- drawn with Mantel's gifts of description and characterization. Todo esto adornada por una trama de un misterio que envuelve el edificio donde vive y que hace que Frances se sienta cada vez más paranoica.

Out of desperation, Frances becomes friends of sorts with the Pakistani woman across the hall and the Arab woman living upstairs, each of whom explains her dismaying rationalization for the role of women in this puritanical society. Add the religious fervor and accompanying hypocrisy in a kingdom ruled by one fractious royal family and you have an often terrifying, always annoying environment in which to try to build a peaceful life. Yasmin and Samira, western-educated but strong defenders of Islam, tell her the apartment belongs to a powerful Saudi man who's installed his mistress there.This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic.

For her novel, Mantel has embellished her miserable experience with a sinister mystery concerning a supposedly unoccupied flat in the gloomy building where Frances Shore lives with her husband, a contractor employed by the Saudi government.

This certainly isn't a one-sided book: the Western company-men run the gamut from unashamed racists to those like Frances' husband who want to rise to the challenge of building projects and who also cannot turn down the incredible salaries they're offered.

Nearly 30 years on from its original publication, Hilary Mantel's third novel is still as disturbing, incisive and illuminating as ever. Mantel's point is directly stated on page 234 when Frances tells the very tall Fairfax, "This is no place for men who like women. Frances and Yasmin become friends, more because there is little alternative, though they later become friends with Samira, the wife of the Arab man Frances is not allowed to speak to.It's written as a memoir of her 4 year stay in Saudi Arabia for her husband's work during her younger life. Mantel draws on her own experience of living in Jeddah for 4 years and uses a magnifying glass here, while showing how – especially being an ex pat and not speaking the language – one can end up feeling being enclosed in a glass fish bowl with an ever diminishing oxygen supply. Sounds like an excellent novel for a book group, Ali, especially as challenging/unlikeable characters tend to give rise to a range of different responses from readers.

The couple settle down to life in an apartment on the titular Ghazzah Street – a building with numerous gates and locks which must be locked and unlocked on entry and exit for the safety and security of all. It may have been poor editing; perhaps at some point the book was going to be written in the present and when it was reworked, some stuff got by. When it comes through early, she joins him in an apartment on, you guessed it, Ghazza street where they were not surrounded by other British expats. Andrew, a civil engineer, is there to make a lot of money by working on the construction of a new Ministry Building. Dopo l’iniziale alienante solitudine, inizia qualche forma di contatto con altre donne, vicine di casa, ma rimane sempre una decisiva distanza di cultura e un ingestibile senso di incomprensione (ad un certo punto Frances sbotta con Andrew: «No wonder they have such a bloody awful religion», visto che vivono in un luogo dove non cresce niente).

The streets are not a woman's territory; confined in her flat, she finds her sense of self begin to dissolve. I visited Riyadh briefly on a reporting trip at about the same period Mantel describes -- when the bloom of the oil gold rush was fading and the Kingdom was forced into budget cuts that led to many grand building projects being abandoned. Because he knew the country so well, he said, sure, I'm staying for several days so why don't I come by day after tomorrow. I read this book with a mounting sense of dread, all the more appropriate in the light of recent events in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey. Also, with characters so unlikeable, expressing vile views, some readers in the group just became disengaged by them – which I can understand, but I don’t usually have a problem with unlikeable characters.