Rebel

A gripping memoir of bravery and sacrifice by a young woman whose escape from her abusive family and an oppressive culture in Saudi Arabia captivated the world

In early 2019, after three years of careful planning, Rahaf Mohammed finally escaped her abusive family in Saudi Arabia—but made it only to Bangkok before being stripped of her passport. If forced to return home, she was sure she would be killed, like other rebel women in her country. As men pounded at the door of her barricaded hotel room, she opened a Twitter account. The teenager reached out to the world, and the world answered—she gained 45,000 followers in one day, and those followers 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 control of her male relatives—including her high-profile politician father—she endured an abusive childhood in which oppression 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, Rebel is a breathtaking and life-affirming memoir about one woman’s tenacious pursuit of freedom.

How does one young woman take on a kingdom and win her freedom?

A Gripping Escape Story: Read the harrowing, minute-by-minute account of Rahaf’s flight from her powerful family, culminating in a standoff in a barricaded Bangkok hotel room. The Power of Social Media: Discover how a single Twitter account, opened in a moment of desperation, rallied 45,000 followers and the global community to save her life. Inside the Closed Kingdom: Gain an unprecedented look into the oppressive culture of Saudi Arabia, from the perspective of a politician’s daughter who was granted privilege but denied freedom. A Woman’s Fight for Freedom: Follow one woman’s journey from a childhood of abuse to embracing feminism and atheism, and ultimately making a tenacious solo escape to Canada to seek asylum.