Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World

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Oneworld, 2010 - 421 pages
Osama bin Laden is the western world's most wanted terrorist. Intent on secrecy at all costs, his personal life has been shrouded in mystery until now. For the first time, Osama's first wife and fourth son break the silence to reveal the truth about the character and life of a man both feared and revered around the globe. Osama married his first cousin Najwa when he was just 17. Here she describes the quiet, serious young man she fell in love with, who would take her from a life of extraordinary wealth in Saudi Arabia to a remote mountaintop in Afghanistan. As his senior wife, she would bear him eleven children and watch him become ever stricter, until his growing fanaticism tore the family apart. Their son, Omar, gives a detailed account of his childhood, vying for his father's love in a household of more than 20 brothers and sisters and a youth spent learning desert survival skills and handling Kalashnikovs. Here we see Osama the authoritarian husband and stern father, the entrepreneur, and the leader of a complex terrorist network. Together, in gripping detail, mother and son reveal their life on the run forced to flee from country to country in response to Osama's increasingly militant activities until their eventual escape from Afghanistan just before the tragic events of 9/11 that would change the world forever. Never before has Osama's own family gone beyond the headlines to show us Osama the man.

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About the author (2010)

Jean Sasson was born in 1947 in Troy, Alabama. She is an American writer whose work mainly centers around women in the Middle East. Sasson lived in Saudi Arabia for twelve years as an admisitrative coordinator of medical affairs for a specialist hospital. He books include: The Rape of Kuwait, and the bestselling Princess Trilogy -- Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia, Princess Sultana's Daughters, and Princess Sultana's Circle. She also wrote Growing Up bin Laden.

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