Book Review: ‘Gulf,' by Mo Ogrodnik

New York Times

07-05-2025

GULF, by Mo Ogrodnik
Five women from different countries and social classes find themselves living in and around the Arabian Peninsula in Mo Ogrodnik's debut novel, 'Gulf,' a passionate if uneven look at the physical and emotional violence that women migrants face in the Persian Gulf region in particular, where tens of millions of foreign workers live today. Unfortunately, the premise tying together these disparate characters is as tenuous as it sounds, resulting in a portrait of women in the Middle East that feels reductive, at times even stereotypical.
Newly wed to the heir of a Saudi Arabian railway empire, Dounia is forced to move from Jeddah to a sprawling new mansion in the 'desolate industrial complex' of Ras al-Khair, an epicenter of the region's wealth, rapid modernization and maze-like construction sites. University educated and ambitious, she once hoped to join her father-in-law's empire, as he was the one who 'saw her potential' beyond the home. But his unexpected death leaves her feeling 'useless and rotten,' isolated in the role of pregnant housewife.
When Dounia hires a Filipina domestic worker named Flora to be her maid and nanny, the latter is grieving her infant son's recent death in a hurricane back home. 'In the Gulf States, your employer is your sponsor,' Dounia explains of the region's exploitative kafala system that often amounts to indentured servitude. Descending into postpartum depression, obsession and paranoia, she takes Flora's passport and phone and treats her with increasing cruelty.
Meanwhile, Justine, a curator at the Museum of Natural History in New York, moves to Abu Dhabi with her teenage daughter, Wren, to oversee a falcon exhibit at a brand-new museum, lured by the job's promises of financial security and adventure. There the privileged American expat will become disastrously entangled with Eskedare, an Ethiopian teenager who has traveled to the U.A.E. on forged documents.