This month, we’re immersing ourselves in novels that explore the personal and societal costs of ambition in two of the globe’s economic powerhouses: the Gulf and Singapore.

Mo Ogrodnik (Summit Books, 432 pp., $29.99, May 2025)

This month, we’re immersing ourselves in novels that explore the personal and societal costs of ambition in two of the globe’s economic powerhouses: the Gulf and Singapore.

Mo Ogrodnik (Summit Books, 432 pp., $29.99, May 2025)

Later this month, U.S. President Donald Trump will take his second trip abroad since returning to the White House, traveling to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The visit is a reflection of those countries’ growing geopolitical clout. So too is American filmmaker Mo Ogrodnik’s debut novel, Gulf, an uncomfortable portrait of a region whose economic allure is undergirded by troublesome social and political realities.

The book follows five women from around the world who land in the Gulf for a variety of personal and professional reasons. Justine is a curator from New York City whom the Emirati government has scouted to develop an exhibit on the falcon—the “lion of the skies” and the emblem of the UAE—at the Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi. Dounia is a wealthy Saudi mother based in the port city of Ras al-Khair. She struggles in the postpartum period; “like an abandoned buoy, she float[s] out to sea, losing contact with the world” while subjecting her household to a range of emotional outbursts. Dounia’s life becomes intertwined with that of Flora, the Filipina domestic worker she hires—and abuses—under the notorious kafala system.

Meanwhile, in Raqqa, Syria, a young Zeinah is forced to marry an Islamic State fighter “to secure her parents’ safety.” She at once detests the group but also finds that “ISIS gave her a sense of community and purpose.” Farther south, Eskedare, a girl from Ethiopia, seeks to follow her great love to Qatar—to build stadiums for the 2022 World Cup—but ends up being trafficked first to Yemen and then to the UAE, where she encounters Justine.

Ogrodnik, a professor at New York University........

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