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Review title: Harem, a Confused Look at History
Product review: Harem wins five stars for book design, and only one for content. Alev Lyttle Croutier obviously spent a tremendous amount of time finding artwork to illustrate her book. However, most of the paintings that she selected are elaborate European orientalist fantasies of Haram life and not actual historicaly relevant pieces. Perhaps Ms. Croutier should have spent a little more time researching her topic. Aside from some pretty staggaring historical mistakes and gross generalizations about Islam, the book contains very little usefull information for scholars. Most of Haram: World Behind the Viel focuses on a single royal Turkish Haram - with very little cross-cultural analysis. If you are interested in orientalist art or detailed descriptions of eunich castration than this is the book for you, but if you are looking for actual scholarship - look elsewhere.
