A Life in Violent Motion

This lightweight book is being reviewed everywhere because of the following intensely engaging facts: Its author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was born into a prominent Muslim family in Somalia in 1969. Her father, Hirsi Magan, was a leader of the anticommunist opposition and was forced to flee Somalia—followed by his family—to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and finally, Kenya. During these years of strict Muslim girlhood, her grandmother saw to it that Ayaan had a clitoridectomy.