Relationship self-help book is Saudi best-seller

BOOK SALES: Self-help book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus is one of Saudi's best sellers.

An American self help book that offers advice on how to improve husband-wife relationships is among the best selling books to date in Saudi Arabia, the head of the country’s largest bookstore chain has revealed.

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus was first published in 1992 and is based on the notion that men and women are as different as people from different planets.

“This is one of the best selling titles,” Akram Al Agil, chief executive of Jarir Bookstores said.

He disagrees with critics who claim that the book is based on Western values that are incompatible with Saudi culture.

“Frankly speaking, this is not true,” he said. “You cannot tell me this is Western culture. This is an international culture.”

Saudi women have become the biggest consumers of English language books after an exodus of Western expats following the second Gulf War. Jarir now sells more English titles than Arabic ones.

Women make up 70 percent of the students at Saudi university but only around 5 percent of the Kingdom’s workforce.

Jarir has a responsibility to bring a wide range of books to the market so that people can decide for themselves what they like and don’t like, Al Agil said.

The company is translating an increasing number of US best sellers into Arabic, he added.

“Men Are from Mars…” has come under fire from Western feminists who believe the central theme of the book is simplistic and sexist.

Its author, John Gray, was the subject of controversy in 2001 after it transpired that the university that awarded him a PhD in psychology, Columbia Pacific University, had been closed down following an investigation into its academic standards.

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