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From personal encounters with the veil in France (where it is banned) to Iran (where it is compulsory), Rafia Zakaria shows how the garment´s reputation as a pre-modern relic is fraught and up for grabs.

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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
The veil can be an instrument of feminist empowerment, and veiled anonymity can confer power to women. Starting from her own marriage ceremony at which she first wore a full veil, Rafia Zakaria examines how veils do more than they get credit for.

Part memoir and part philosophical investigation, Veil questions that what is seen is always good and free, and that what is veiled can only signal servility and subterfuge. From personal encounters with the veil in France (where it is banned) to Iran (where it is compulsory), Zakaria shows how the garment´s reputation as a pre-modern relic is fraught and up for grabs. The veil is an object in constant transformation, whose myriad meanings challenge the absolute truths of patriarchy.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

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Introduction
1. Submission
2. Purity, Necessity Unity
3. Rebellion
4. Feminism
5. Submissive or SubmersiveEpilogue
Index

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Rafia Zakaria, journalist and author, unravels the complex nexus of attitudes, policies, and histories revolving around this object in her fascinating new book, Veil. She demonstrates how the object can serve as a moral delineator, a disciplinary measure, a signifier of goodness, or as a means to subvert or rebel social norms. Through personal narratives and detailed analysis of various social and political conditions Zakaria offers an engaging and nuanced assessment of the veil in the contemporary context. New Books Network

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Zakaria, Rafia
Rafia Zakaria is an attorney, a political philosopher, and a columnist for DAWN Pakistan and AL Jazeera America. She is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, Aeon, Guernica, the New York Times and others. Her book The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (2015) received positive reviews in the New York Times, NPR, Ms.Magazine. Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, The Toronto Star, Bustle, Hindustan Times, DNA India, Indian Express, Calcutta Statesman, Dissent and The Nation.

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