Freedom: The Story of My Second Life | 
|  | | | Title: | Freedom: The Story of My Second Life | | Author: | Malika Oufkir | | Publisher: | Miramax | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 09 October, 2007 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 1401309208 / 9781401309206 | | List Price: | $14.00 | | You Save: | $2.80 | | Amazon Price: | $11.20 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
Stolen Lives, Malika Oufkir’s intensely moving account of her twenty years imprisoned in a desert jail in Morocco, was a surprise international best seller and the second non-fiction title ever selected for Oprah’s Book Club. In her highly anticipated follow-up, Malika reflects on the life she lived before and during incarceration and how dramatically the world had changed when she emerged. Malika Oufkir was born into extreme privilege as the daughter of the king of Morocco’s closest aide, and she grew up in the palace as companion to the Moroccan princess. But in 1972, her life of luxury came to a crashing halt.Her father was executed for attempting to assassinate the king, and she and her family were locked away for two decades. After a remarkable escape, Malika and her family returned to the world they’d left behind, only to find it transformed. Living for the first time as an adult, Malika writes candidly about adjusting to the world we take for granted, from negotiating ATMs to the excesses of shopping malls, to falling in love and sex. In Stolen Lives, Malika mourned the children she was not having as she wasted away in prison. When she is finally free, motherhood becomes crucial to Malika’s ability to fully live her life: she adopts first her niece, then a baby boy from Morocco. Full of insight and piercing observations, as well as humor, Freedom is as masterful and thoughtprovoking as the original.
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Customer Reviews:
• Freedom 29 May, 2008
Great follow-up to "Stolen Lives." The difficulty of her return from prison to freedom is beautifully described. Fortuately for her, she comes from a well-known family and she moves not to a regular life, but more a life of privilege. The road blocks, fears, joys, the return to a life 20 years later, no one could have described them better that Malika Oufkir.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A18EPKE0KX6W6R
• Disappointing Writing 18 February, 2007
After i read "Stolen Lives",which i have recommended to many of my friends, i could not understand why and how this book was written! There were times where the author lost me completely..it was boring and could not hold my attention. I had to leave it!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3B9RUP4JPL5DB
• Freedom: The Story Of My Second Life 28 October, 2007
The book was very slow and not as interesting as her first book.
I felt like I had to force myself to finish the book and I must
admit that I did skip through several pages when I became bored
with her constant complaining about her lost 20 years and not
getting on with life.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1BVD0U0RVLC24
• Disappointing 06 September, 2007
Count me among the reviewers who found this book a tough slog.
The writing style is much different than that on her first book and, as I have met her and heard her speak, different yet from her own personal style. Makes me think she didn't do much of the writing herself, and maybe that's why some of us have the impression her heart wasn't quite into this, but she wanted to capitalize on the success of her first book.
I wish the author and her family well. They have been to hell and back. But I just cannot recommend this book.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3M7RMKBR7Z1VI
• Is It Natural To Live With Freedom? 05 September, 2007
Note: The voice in FREEDOM is different than that in STOLEN LIVES because only Oufkir wrote this book, whereas two other authors contributed to STOLEN LIVES.
In the memoir FREEDOM: THE STORY OF MY SECOND LIFE (a sequel to STOLEN LIVES) author Malika Oufkir describes relearning how to live as a free person. She was 19 when she, her mother, and her brothers and sisters were confined to a Moroccan prison. Before that she was adopted by the king and basically locked up in the king's court. She was 39 when she escaped; she later moved to Paris, France. She talks about her fear, present even after she's safe:
"Even though I am now far from my jailers, shielded by the media [the media learned about her family's imprisonment then spread the word], I'm afraid everything could collapse around me in instant. What exactly am I afraid of? I don't even know myself. Certain terrors are so deeply rooted that they defy all logic. Even now, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, in those eerie hours when you can't quite tell whether you are awake or still dreaming, and I think I hear footsteps out in the hall... the apartment door opens and out of nowhere my jailers come to get me for crimes I haven't yet committed. Perhaps innocence begets its own guilt, planting suspicion both in oneself and in the eyes of others. That fear of being punished for things I haven't done, or haven't done yet, intensifies the hellish whirlwind of doubt. Like a battered child, I throw my arms up over my face, warding off blows and caresses, in order not to see what awaits me...."
Freedom isn't the gift she expects it to be; she is often confused about how to manage aspects it, particularly time: "Most free people are painfully dependent on their watches and alarm clocks, an almost physical addiction that makes them cling to each second as if were their last. I have all the time in the world." She contrasts free people's perceptions with her own: "I had to relearn everything. I had trouble with the notion of time, not knowing when I had to hurry and when I had time to spare, not understanding the imperatives of schedules."
Oufkir describes her struggles to figure out what a motion sensor sink is or how to operate an ATM--things people in Paris have probably used for more than 15 years--which is about the same as you or me trying to use laundry facilities in a foreign country when all the directions are written in a language we don't understand; this only beomes humorous later. These struggles are listed to illustrate what it means to straddle the gap between "what was" and "what is."(The German film "Good Bye, Lenin!" offers a funny take on this concept; the characters go to great lengths to keep someone from seeing "what is.")
FREEDOM's strength is Oufkir's focus on the small things that make up, for her, freedom. It's beautifully written and translated from French. Read FREEDOM first, then go back and read STOLEN LIVES. FREEDOM raises questions that are, to this reader's delight, answered in STOLEN LIVES.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AJZEANIM8QBYS
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