Through the Veil

What is Middle Eastern culture like from the inside?

Look Inside the Book

Tourism is always easier than life. In this book, Lisa Ohlen Harris gives a creative, but non-fictional account of her time in Jordan. Rather than looking at the superficialities of Middle Eastern culture, Through the Veil takes a long and honest look at things which are usually hidden from western eyes, dispelling stereotypes and focusing on real individuals, their lives, and their perspectives. From ritual washing to prayer to fasts, Harris gives a full-orbed depiction of a world that affects us so powerfully and yet which we know so little about.

What People Are Saying:

"With an ethnographer's trained eye and a poet's lyric tongue, Lisa Ohlen Harris travels to the Middle East where she finds, in a mosque, tile after tile, the design of every square repeating the one next to it in a silent echo, lonely and lovely. Loneliness and loveliness pervade Harris's story as we journey with her to seek out answers in a land embraced by questions." -Brenda Miller, author of Season of the Body and Blessing of the Animals Captivating

"'Through' is the operative word in Through the Veil as Lisa Ohlen Harris—with curiosity and compassion—chronicles her unique contact with women of the Middle East. Beautifully orchestrated with honesty, insight, and humor, this book penetrates another culture and, at the same time, helps us understand what it is to be American, in the best sense of that word." -Judith Kitchen, author of Distance & Direction