In June 2019, visitors to Art Basel were invited to enter The Safe, an installation created by the Saudi artist Abdulnasser Gharem. The Safe is a room with padded and apparently soundproofed white walls, furnished with a white bed and rumpled rough white blanket. It appears like a cross between the worst sort of prison or clinic for the psychologically ill and some kind of boutique hotel. On one wall, there is a picture of a vast sword beneath Arabic script that reads, ‘there is only one God and Muhammad is his prophet’, the fundamental principle of Islam. The arrangement closely resembles the flag of Saudi Arabia. Visitors, who are brought in by a ‘guard’ at forty-second intervals, are encouraged to write messages of political or other significance on the walls or use stamps bearing statements in Arabic and English, such as ‘the difference between the terrorist and the martyr is the media coverage’. 

Malise Ruthven ends this informed and insightful book with a description of The Safe. Gharem, he tells us, is a former officer in the Saudi army who, in interviews, always stresses that his work is ‘not about taking sides’. This is no doubt politic, given that Gharem still lives in the kingdom, but it is difficult to see The Safe as anything but a swingeing critique of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as ‘MBS’), the 39-year-old who has been in power since 2015. In the dysfunctional realm of MBS, Ruthven comments, The Safe is ‘a fitting symbol of cruelty and repression’. On the other hand, he says, the fact that its creator continues to reside and work in Saudi Arabia is a sign of hope.

Ruthven has won a deserved reputation as one of the most informed and acute writers on the Islamic world, eschewing angry pontification or clever instant commentary. This book, an update of one first published in French in 2019, deserves to be read by anyone seriously interested in Saudi Arabia and