For desert of this Blog, I will use Norma Khouri's hoax-book 'FORBIDDEN LIES'
We have heard or read a lot about this hoax authors book. But guess who has endorsed this book with the following words of wisdom? "NORMA KHOURI'S COURAGE AND CONDOUR TAKES US INTO THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF A WORLD THAT IS USUALLY CLOAKED IN MYSTERY, " it is non other then arch-hoaxter Jean Sasson herself. This in itself should not surprise us because as faith has it, those two 'authors' are cut from one and the same cloth. The Cloth of Lies and Deception.
Jean Sasson's Princess Sultana trilogy is One Big Hoax. Please believe me, there is no Arabic Princess, Jean Sasson never had a Princess nor did she have a single page of a diary of a Princess. She lied. Jean Sasson wrote the Princess books from my, Friederike Monika Adsani's autoboography CINDERELLA IN ARABIA.
Writing and selling endless lies to the unsuspecting readers in the West, has made Jean Sasson, her literary agent, and of course the publishers of those hoax books, very, very rich indeed.Friederike Monika Adsani
Resolved Question
Where is the proof that Jean Sasson's 'Princess" book is fact and not fiction?
I have read manny believable stories concerning this Saudi Arabian Princess Sultana, the heroine of the Princess trilogy. I have read Daughters Of Arabia and I am in two minds about if what I read is the truth.
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
There are absolutely no facts to support Jean Sasson's supposed biographical stories. The Saudi Arabian royal family has little, if any reason at all, to `expose' itself in this manner. All King Abdulaziz's children and grandchildren, whether male or female, benefit from the status quo. There is no motivation for them to disrupt it, as the so-called Princess Sultana attempts to do through her `expose.' Moreover, Sasson is writing in accordance with prescribed stereotypes and is repeating rumours which have been circulating about the Saud family. Were she actually being told the story by a Saudi princess, stereotypes which have been dismantled, not upheld, and there would have been a discernible insider's perspective. Not only is the insider perspective completely absent but Sasson has been singularly unable to present a shred of evidence to establish that Sultana is anything but an outcome of her over-active imagination. At the very, very, very best - Sultana is a composite character whose life and experiences were drawn from those of several members of the Saud family.
Sasson is writing to sell copies and make money. She isn't a `truth teller' and is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a biographer.
Source(s):
I have since been able to retrieve this article.
So here it is: please click on the link below to read 16 pages of Jean Sasson's lies.
This article has been written in reply to Jean Sasson’s “Frivolous Lawsuits” slur, which she posted on her personal website.
My name is Monika Adsani. It was recently brought to my attention that Jean Sasson, author of Princess, Daughters of Arabia and Sultana’s Circle, placead a ten-page character assassination of me on her website in 2002 under the heading “Frivolous Lawsuits”. It was a shock to come across this. Nevertheless, reading it and scratching the surface only slightly, the deceit and deception that it reveals is quite an eye opener. Let me explain. In 1992 I received my first shock when I discovered that Jean Sasson had written Princess, “an appalling indictment of the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia” which she proudly announced to be the true life story of an incredibly brave and wealthy real life Arabian Princess from the highest echelon of Saudi Arabian Royalty – from the house of Saud itself. The reason I was shocked on reading this Princess book was my realisation that the text of the book had been put together from no other source than what I recognised to be my very own autobiography Cinderella in Arabia, which I wrote 1986-87 in Austria after the break-up of my 23-year marriage to an Oxford educated, wealthy and privileged Diplomat from oil-rich Kuwait where I lived for 13 years with his family. I was without doubt the first Western woman to have written so intimate an account about the amazing inner lifestyles and goings on about one of the very alien and mysterious oil rich Middle Eastern countries, where money is no problem, but gossip, witchcraft and sex play a major role. Nowadays the shelves in bookstores are inundated with similar books.Sasson’s Princess, which in reality has absolutely no relation to any Saudi Arabian Princess’s lifestyle, became a worldwide best seller. Soon Daughters of Arabia, the second Princess book, followed – not quite like Princess, but equally successful. Needless to say, it was of course also derived from my autobiography with the exception that everything I had written was exaggerated and blown out of all proportion, almost galling, clearly for sensational purposes. As I am very familiar and well informed with Saudi Arabia’s and Kuwaiti’s complex social life, culture, Islam and Royalty alike, and fluent in Arabic, I knew instantly that Jean Sasson was lying outright when she claimed that a Saudi Royal had something or anything to do with her books, and that it was extremely unlikely even impossible that an Arabian Princess from the Saudi royal Al-Saud clan or anywhere else had become her “closest and best of friends”.Sasson had applied to work in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for 4-5 years in a hospital as a lowly assistant administrator in an office. She was not even a head secretary and did not mix with patients. None of the people who worked with her at the hospital remember her being invited to American Embassy parties, nor soirees, where, she claims, she met the Princess. Can anybody imagine a Moslem Princess or other female covered from head to toe in a black abaya, only her eyes peeping out, daring to attend any kind of party, especially a party where Arabic and western men were present and alcohol was in evidence – and that in Saudi Arabia, of all places?
As Sasson’s story goes, the Princess actually begged her to write the true story of her privileged but very unhappy life, being born into the clan of the highest Saudi royalties in the land, and for this purpose provided her with her “personal diaries” which the Princess confidentially entrusted into Jean Sasson’s care. The Princess’s alleged reason for doing so was that she wanted to inform the Western world – wanted us to know – of the abhorrent violence all Saudi Arabian women are exposed to from their own men folk. Princess “Sultana”, as she is called, wanted the West and especially America to come to the rescue of these women and help to establish human rights for all women in Saudi Arabia.
All incoming finances from the princess books were of course completely unimportant to the Princess – so Sasson says, and claimed that the Princess told her she was welcome to keep all the money for herself since she was not in need of it.
However, the truth of this titillating story is morbidly quite different. Trust me when I tell you that it is a cultural thing in Saudi Arabia that no Saudi Bedouin, whether upper class or middle class, and most definitely no Saudi Royal, would ever mix privately or become close friends with any member of their imported foreign Western hospital workforce, who are kept in segregated compounds so that they cannot freely mix with native Saudis because they are, in a sense, looked upon as servants. Being seen with a single European woman or, God forbid, a foreign male, a Saudi female would risk her reputation for ever. The reality is of course that Westerners come to Saudi Arabia and to Kuwait for only one reason – to make fabulous tax-free money. What would be in it for Saudi royalty to mix with such a foreigner? Exactly! Of course, European royalty visiting Saudi Arabia, as did Lady Diana (God bless her) and Prince Charles, would be another story altogether.The true facts are like this. In 1987, following a hospital vacancy advertised in an American newspaper, Sasson may well have encountered and befriended fellow Arabic hospital workers from Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Egypt and Europe. (Saudi men and Kuwaitis always find ways to be “intimate” with American and European females in return for money or jewellery – not suggesting that Sasson was one of them, of course.)Through diligent research, I soon discovered that none other than my very own American, New York based literary agent, Peter Miller, to whom I paid a lot of money (and therefore to the P.M.A. Literary and Film Agency which he represented), and with whom I had a one-year contract for the representation of my autobiography Cinderella of Arabia (from 1988-89), who also wrote a film script for Cinderella of Arabia, was the actual culprit behind the Princess books! It was Peter Miller who had passed my manuscript on to Jean Sasson, a manuscript that had actually been copyrighted page-by-page by my divorce lawyer Alan Lowe in 1987. Sasson in turn jettisoned her literary agent, Dorese Alyss, who had served as agent for Sasson’s first ever (equally phoney) propaganda book, The Rape of Kuwait, to allow Peter Miller to step into her shoes.
After further serious research and thousands of dollars spent, I, along with my legal team, and with hard evidence, took Peter Miller, Jean Sasson and the publishers of the Princess Books before a Federal Court in New York, where I had the further misfortune to be landed with a biased, female Judge who sided with the American defendants, especially the publishers’ uncouth attorney. In their eyes, I was a mere nobody, an unimportant foreigner from continental Europe, from Austria, of all places, who had the cheek and audacity to challenge fellow Americans for their wrong doings. How dare I? And so all my evidence was simply ignored, never addressed nor mentioned by the Judge. I was refused my right for a trial with a Judge and Jury. I felt as if I was under the KGB. The Judge ruled supreme and even made changes to one of the existing laws, to comply with the request of the publisher’s defending attorney. This “law” was then conveniently used to enable the Judge to disallow my case to continue. Of course, Sasson was unable to provide any proof whatsoever of a living or dead Saudi Princess or diaries in any form or manner to the Court, and so had to be hushed up. Therefore the Judge obligingly wrote in one of her final decisions against me that it was irrelevant if Sasson did, or did not know a Princess, and equally irrelevant to the case if Sasson did or did not have a diary from a Princess from which she wrote her “true” Princess books. I was left shell-shocked and so were my attorneys, all honest and good men. One therefore asks a simple question: “From where did Sasson get the material to write her Princess books?” I have already told you – from the unpublished manuscript of my autobiography Cinderella in Arabia which originated from my true-life story.Instead of pointing out the “similarities” of the two works in accordance with the copyright law, of which I had provided plenty of evidence to the Court, the honourable Judge decided to skip and ignore those rules as well and instead simply regurgitated in parrot-like fashion the “differences” provided by the power-broker publisher’s defending attorney, solemnly basing all her Judgements solely on the word of those set upon destroying my case. She documented at that time that I had not brought her a shred of evidence to support my accusations, and that there were no similarities whatsoever between Sasson and Adsani’s works, and so simply threw out my case altogether. This diabolical decision of the judge must have instilled the wrong kind of self-esteem and self-confidence in Sasson which has “gone to her head”, so much so that she has felt invincible ever since.So now I feel forced to display just some of the similarities the Judge has so gallantly chosen not to acknowledge and hush up, so that the readers of Sasson’s “Frivolous Lawsuits” and of all her fake Princess books can judge for themselves who is telling the truth.Knowing what I actually know about Jean Sasson, one of the most ironic facts of this sorry saga must surely be the audacity with which she keeps shamelessly re-inventing and selling herself over the years with the Judge’s continued approval, and her new found confidence – for one reason only – to make lots and lots of money. She portrays herself as this gutsy, self-appointed human rights heroine whose life’s mission is selflessly to write books which help make changes to the terrible repression of all unfortunate suffering Muslim females in Arab countries, who are despised by their fathers, hated by their brothers, and then abused and beaten by their husbands. Pull the other one, madam bluffer – money has nothing to do with it, has it? As I see it, it is a joke that Sasson dares to claim she is a serious student of Islam. DEFINITELY NOT! She claims to know the ins and outs of Arabic culture like no other European. DECIDEDLY NOT! Neither does she speak or understand any Arabic. When questioned in depositions, it transpired that she did not even know what the word shaikca means in Arabic. It means princess! If one’s best friend is an Arabic princess and one travels with her constantly, wouldn’t one know the meaning of that unique word, which would have been used regularly by her servants when addressing her?Sasson and her protective publishers have made millions out of my Cinderella in Arabia and they continue to receive substantial sums of money to this day, which is about the life I have lived and recorded in my manuscript; yet I, in short succession, had fines imposed upon me by this Judge – fines I had to provide to the court in endless money bonds starting with $10,000, $50,000, followed by a whopping $108,000. After this I asked permission to take the Judge’s injustice to the Appeal Court to have it overturned. In turn the Judge imposed a further $35,000 fine. Their aim of course was to suck me dry, from a monetary point of view, so I could no longer carry on my defence – and it worked. At the end of the case the defendants and their legal team got to share all my money amongst themselves. I was robbed of a fortune trying my hardest to the best of my ability to retrieve my stolen property. I had left two and a half million dollars behind in the USA trying to defend my rights. Not only had the literary vampires, but the legal vampires, sucked me dry – in the first instance by stealing my work, and then through legal fines. It was a double whammy.As I see it, Miller and Sasson stole my past and the Judge stole my future. Many people get cheated by small-time crooks – I could deal with that – but to be cheated by the Judge as well, whom I greatly respected to start with, knocked me for sixes. No-one has the slightest idea in what kind of a state this Judge has left me. This agonising copyright case has completely derailed me from the promising path I was set on, towards a happy new future I had planned after my divorce; but the Judge, whom I solemnly blame, has ruined all this, and so much more, for me.One might think that Peter Miller, the literary genius behind the bestselling Princess book, would be ever so proud of it’s success. How interesting, then, that he has completely erased his association with the book, including his client, Jean Sasson, from his website. I wonder why he has distanced himself? I guess it was the lingering stench of it all. For Sultana’s Daughters, Sasson’s third book, she already had agent Number Three lined up after discarding Peter Miller.I still have to address Deborah Moggach’s equally false, self-seeking cover up statement. She, too, prior to Miller and Sasson, in 1990, had “borrowed” from my Cinderella in Arabia manuscript without my permission for a six-part T.V. series ironically called STOLEN and the paperback of the same title. Life is stranger than fiction – absolutely true. Deborah Moggach, at the time a little known novelist, was a friend of Silvia Kennedy, the woman I hired to edit my manuscript in London. I met her just the once at Silvia’s when I went to see her with a lady friend of mine. Plain looking and horsy, she made no special impact on me and I instantly forgot about her at the time – until much later. Deborah Moggach now calls her friend “Caroline” instead of “Silvia” in her lying statement – serious initial signs of Alzheimer’s, I would say, unless, of course, as I suspect, Moggach wants to distance herself from Silvia to erase any association with my editor (just like Miller did with Sasson). Clever ploy. Well, it won’t wash.At the time of my discovery about Moggach I subsequently went to see a lawyer who initially hired a Professor of English Literature from King’s College. He made very impressive comparisons between Moggach’s Stolen novel and the manuscript of my Cinderella in Arabia. Since both women, Sasson and Moggach, are ganging up on me (birds of a feather flock together) I feel forced to defend myself and to tell the truth as it actually is, or was. Had Moggach seriously wanted to get hold of me because, as she claims, I drove her mad and even out of her home, it would have been as easy as 1,2,3. At that time I sought advice from Mr Graham Lord, a book critic and real English gentleman, before actually seeking a lawyer. He agreed to meet with me for lunch at Morton’s, in Berkley Square, London, a private club where I was a member and well known. He told me he knew Deborah Moggach personally and that he would be pleased to talk to her on my behalf concerning Stolen. Before we parted we exchanged business cards. Some days later, Mr Lord called to say that he had indeed spoken to Deborah Moggach and that she would be happy to talk with me. I called her straightaway but as soon as I had halfway introduced myself, she cut me off to pepper me with obscenities, screaming into my ear that I was crazy and I should see a doctor of some kind to have my brain tested. Like all important conversations, this one as well has been recorded and is in safekeeping. As I previously mentioned, I found a very good and pleasant lawyer, Mr Jeffrey Bindmann.If I had in reality bothered Mrs Moggach, an English novelist of some repute (tarnished, regrettably, by the unfortunate murder charge against her ageing mother), would she not at least have spoken to Mr Graham Lord first of all – the very man who had my details? Alternatively, she could have gone or sent the police to Morton’s to find out my whereabouts; or, best of all, she could simply have called British Telecom to make a complaint, and in return they would have monitored her telephone line like hawks and consequently caught me in the act, red handed.I was of course innocent of all the mean things that Moggach accused me of. She plays a little girl lost, saying she even had to move home because of me! Who in all honesty on this earth is going to believe such nonsense? Well, I’ll tell you who – the American Judge who allowed Sasson to use Moggach’s cocktail of lies against me, no questions asked, even without any sworn affidavit from Moggach, just a declaration. If Jack The Ripper had written derogatory comments about me, this Judge would have accepted it without question.Throughout the 4+ years of actual court activity in New York, none of the defendants even showed their faces, not once! I was there at every given opportunity, flying to and from New York wherever I was at the time, attending every session, hoping against hope that the Judge, Denise Cote, would do the right thing. Wishful thinking, Monika! Everything was in vain.Having been caught with their knickers down, Sasson, like Moggach, kept on dreaming up new lies in order to cover their old multiple lies, because neither had the slightest evidence or proof of their lies with which they accused me. On the other hand, I have concrete authentic evidence to support that what I say is simply God’s truth. But then, you see, I am not of the same feather! The article in the English Observer written by Sarah Beverly has nothing to do with me. I was never interviewed by her. Likewise, Fay Weldon, the celebrated novelist, a national English treasure, also denies having participated in the same article. I believe it was egged on by Deborah Moggach since it put her and Sasson in such a favourable light with me as the villain. Further down you will find a statement by Fay Weldon, admitting that she had no part in discrediting me.An American female Judge has, wrongly and most unjustly, dismissed my very valid copyright case in favour of influential powerful American, mainline publishers, for reasons best known to herself. This does not mean the people I accused of stealing my work are innocent. Not at all.
Let us remember, O.J. Simpson is supposed to be guilty of murdering his wife, Nicole, and her male friend. And yet O.J. walked free. Let us also remember the trial of Louise Woodward, the English nanny – what a fiasco that was! And what about Bill Clinton? He was assured that if he testified on video it would be kept strictly confidential, only for this promise to be later overturned and the whole world saw the President swear with his hand held high that he had “no sexual relation with that woman” – Monica Lewinsky! If the mighty President of the USA does not get a fair shake, how can a lone foreign lady expect to get her rights heard? So what does that tell us about the American Justice System? I went to seek justice against people who stole my property and came away even more severely injured as a human rights victim. Only in America!Jean Sasson has been divorced three times, that is true. She has no children, yet this person, who came out of nowhere, who lives a life of deceit, has the temerity to criticises and demean my first born (of three sons), a fighter pilot who is a hero. He fought bravely with his friends in Kuwait against the Iraqis in Desert Storm, the first gulf war, instead of joining those who fled across Kuwait’s borders when Saddam invaded. He saw many of his friends die and witnessed terrible killings. How dare someone with a questionable track record like Jean Sasson even attempt to discredit my son, using him to white wash herself of her very own wrong doings while knowing sweet nothing about him? He suffered third degree burns and was flown from Kuwait to London Heathrow Airport to be hospitalised for many months at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital Burns Unit in Aylesbury, England. He still suffers from post-traumatic stress.
To fake humanitarian, money-grubbing, greedy Jean Sasson, I suggest, instead of attacking my heroic son, tell us about your ex-husband No. 3, PETER MAURICE MICHAEL SASSON, of the Sasson Corporation, whose nationality is of course Italian – yes, ITALIAN and definitely NOT Egyptian, as you claim in the books that bear your name. Please tell us why Peter Maurice Michael was forced to flee from Saudi Arabia to Australia in such a great hurry, leaving many an unfortunate American expat in sorrow with financial losses behind in the Saudi desert sands – victims like Scott Hunter and others who lost 3-4 millions of dollars a head, believing they had invested in blue cross/blue shield Delaware (or was it Pinnacle?) health insurance. Does any of this ring a bell? There is much much more, too, where that information came from.
My reply to Jean Sasson’s primitive silly emails is: I shall ignore them.
As I come to the end of my response to Sasson’s “Frivolous Lawsuit” accusations, I have to stress one more time, Jean Sasson has no Princess from Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, nor has she got a diary of a Princess. What she definitely had and has is Monika Adsani’s Cinderella in Arabia manuscript from which she sourced book after book, leaving only a skeleton behind.
PLEASE BEWARE when a new edition of the Princess book appears. Jean Sasson simply incorporates a new fake letter from the non-existent Princess Sultana and informs readers on the book’s front (or back) cover that “this book is now updated with a new chapter and a letter from Princess Sultana from Saudi Arabia”. Plus on her website Sasson also invites readers to write emails to the princess and she will make sure princess Sultana gets them. But of course nobody must expect reply. I ask you how sick is that?
I, MONIKA ADSANI, PRONOUNCE THIS PRACTISE TO BE A LITERARY SCAM OF THE HIGHEST ORDER.
It comes as no surprise to me, therefore, that there are many doubting readers out there, but also serious well known authors who question the authenticity of these books.
It beggars belief to know that Sasson’s Princess books of misinformation and lies are used in American school and college classes. What is the purpose of selling lies and negative propaganda about Saudi Arabia and Islam? How very irresponsible is that! Is that a contribution to world peace USA-style? But who cares? In America, as long as it makes money, nobody does. Is this justice?
Monika Al-Adsani
FURHER BOOKS BY JEAN SASSON WHICH BEAR PAINFULLY LITTLE TRUTH, IF ANY, ARE :
- THE RAPE OF KUWAIT ( WHICH WAS FULLY FINANCED AND MONITORED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF KUWAIT CONTRARY WHAT JEAN SASSON TOLD AND TO THIS DAY TELLS THE PRESS
2 , 3 & 4 . " PRINCESS " TRILOGY
5. MAYADA DAUGHTER OF IRAQ Mayada Al-Askari
6. LOVE IN A TORN LAND Joanna Al-Askari
7. GROWING UP BIN LADEN
8. AMERICAN CHICK IN SAUDI ARABIA
9. YASMNEENA'S CHOICE
So if you want to fiction, go ahead. But if you want to read non fiction you will not find it by reading any of Jean Sasson's books.
While we are at the subject of literary hoaxes, here we have BURNED ALIVE another discriminating hoax book written by Westerners solemnly to further denigrate Arab Muslims. This time it is a book about Palestinians, as if this race were in need of further discrimination.
This book is written by a daring liar. It is far the nastiest, craziest I have so far came across.
It is styled like Jean Sasson's Princess-trilogy. She could have written it.
After extensive research, I can tell you with a clear conscience that Souad, the heroine of this book, who supposedly escaped a honour-killing with her life, does of course not exist. Like Princess-Sultana, Souad's character was simply 'made up'.
The number one misleading fact we are told is that 'Burned Alive' was first penned in French language and then translated into English. No. It was not. Because in reality this book was first written in English and then translated into French and other foreign languages.
The writing of 'Burned Alive' strongly echoes the writing-style of the 'Princess' trilogy.
Here again, exactly as with Jean Sasson's 'Princess' trilogy, one can easily tell that no Arab, nor some Arabic-speaking individual had anything to do with 'Burned Alive'.
Amongst endless mistakes in this book I like to bring your attention to just one of hundred cock-ups. On page 266 of the Burned Alive paperback published by BANTAM, is written: I HAD BEEN TOUGHT NOT TO GO NEAR THE JEWS, BECAUSE THEY WERE HALOUF, PIGS........
And on page 269 is written THE JEW IS A HALOUF....
Well let me tell you dear readers, halouf means sheep in Arabic and certainly not pig. Mind you, even that is misspelled. It should read: KHAROUF.
Pig in Arabic means: KHANZEER. So there. See the difference?
I can expose this Western-dumb-wit lying author right throughout this book of lies but instead I will leave you in the capable hands of Prof. Therese Taylor. Please click on the link below to read her brilliant review of Burned Alive. I need say no more.
SOME HELPFUL LINKS CONCERNING JEAN SASSON'S HOAX BOOKS.
