Burqalicious: The Dubai Diaries
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A true story of sun, sand, sex and secrecy.
For a sassy young woman used to blagging, blogging and slogging her way through dreary London, the call of a glamorous, tax-free lifestyle in sunny Dubai just couldn't go unanswered. Over the course of two years, while an entire city rose from the dust Becky Wicks scaled a good few rungs of the hard-to-climb career ladder. She became a celebrity editor in a land where sex definitely does not sell and spent most nights in a five-star blur of champagne luxury. Dubai offered everything, but things soon got messy - not least because a wealthy Arab man made Becky his mistress. these days, shamed rule-breakers and failed entrepreneurs are a dime a dozen in Dubai, yet the city retains its allure. Becky Wicks lifts the burqa on the razzle-dazzle and reveals some of what goes on in the world's fastest up-and-coming city and shopping Mecca.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the summer of 2007, 29-year-old Wicks accepted a deputy travel editor position at a publishing company in Dubai. She'd been working at a travel and entertainment Web site in London, but figured exciting things awaited her in Dubai: a better job title, tax-free earnings, and glamour galore. She found those things in varying degrees, but there were many less fabulous aspects of her two years there, like slow Internet speeds, constant sweating, and the fact she and her friend Stacey (who moved with her) didn't like the jobs that brought them there. The author puts all that aside, thanks to lots of drinking; weekend jaunts; finding a new job two months in; and having an affair with a married Muslim man she refers to as "M&M." Although Wicks gets fired for freelancing for a competitor, she remains upbeat... until she's dumped by M&M, reunites with him, is dumped again, and so on. There is humor in these pages, but overall the book has a frantic feel and reads like the blog it began as, rather than a book with hindsight-induced wisdom, conclusions, observations, and a higher level of continuity or craft.
