Burned Alive

“Chillingly parallel to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale . . . Designed to enrage and inform, and it does so with relentless energy.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

When Souad was seventeen she fell in love. In her West Bank village, as in so many others, sex before marriage is considered a grave dishonor to one’s family and is punishable by death. This was her crime. Her brother-in-law was given the task of meting out her punishment. One morning while Souad was washing the family’s clothes, he poured gasoline over her and set her on fire.

Miraculously, she survived, rescued by women of her village, who put out the flames and took her to a local hospital. Horribly burned over seventy percent of her body and still denounced by her family, Souad was able to receive the care she needed only after the intervention of a European aid worker. Now in permanent exile from her homeland, she has decided to tell her story and reveal the barbarity of a practice that continues to this day.

Burned Alive is the first true account ever published by a victim of an “honor crime.” Souad’s inspiring testimony is a shocking, moving, and harrowing story of cruelty and incomparable courage . . . and an inspiring call to action to end a heinous tradition.

“Sounds an alarm on the international stage . . . Her tale is so shocking . . . [and] nothing less than a miracle.” —The Washington Post Book World

“Her tale is gripping. It is Souad’s survival and the courage to tell her story that give the work its redemptive value.” —The Tampa Tribune