Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography
Pages: 263, Paperback
Published: 2017 by Brave Bear & Company
Cover Rating: 5/5
“I entered Gaddafi’s Libya as an expat. A woman alone in an Arab country in every day living.”
Tea in Tripoli by Bernadette Nason is the tale of a twenty-six year old who is recently divorced, in debt, faced workplace sexual harassment and her life is unwillingly a wreck. An incident regarding the death of her cat, leads her to make a bold and impetuous decision. To work abroad. To leave her native land and go on an adventure. Become an expatriate.
With no travel experience, she grabs the first available overseas job in a British Oil corporation and within two months she finds her consciousness and her body in Libya. This is the time of Gaddafi’s regime, the period of 1984, Bernadette tries to escape her past by living in a place that is bizarre and with almost no daily life and always a terrifying chance of being confronted by the Morality Police.
Even though it’s a memoir, the first person narrative really drives the book forward. Her real experiences, including settling in a different country of different culture and religion, overcoming difficulties regarding food, and clothes and bizarre rules of an authoritarian government. She does a great job in describing her surroundings and the feelings that come up with those experiences. Her fine and artful storytelling ability is at the display here with constant wit and humour elements are rightly used.
Recommend to anyone who is interested in reading a memoir or thinks the experience of living under an authoritarian government is intriguing. Also read, if you are trying to explore the era of 1980s.
4 out of 5!
Note: I received this book from the author but that doesn’t mean my review is breaking any reviewing rules and I thank them for their effort.
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