In early 2019, after three years of careful planning, eighteen-year-old Rahaf Mohammed finally escaped her abusive family in Saudi Arabia—but made it only as far as Bangkok before being stripped of her passport. She knew that if she was forced to return home she would be killed, like the other rebel women in her country. As men pounded at the door of her barricaded hotel room, Rahaf created a Twitter account and reached out to the world. The world answered—she gained 45,000 followers in one day, followers who helped her seek asylum in the West. Now, Rahaf Mohammed tells her remarkable story in her own words, revealing untold truths about life in the closed kingdom, where young women are brought up in a repressive system that puts them under the legal control of a male guardian. Raised with immense financial privilege, but under the oppressive control of her male relatives—including her high-profile politician father—Rahaf endured an abusive childhood in which repression and deceit were the norm. Moving from Rahaf’s early days on the underground online network of Saudi runaways, who use coded entries to learn how to flee the brutalities of their homeland, to her solo escape to Canada and a new life, Rebel is a hopeful, breathtaking and life-affirming memoir about one woman’s tenacious pursuit of freedom.
