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Ghalib Halasa wrote this controversial novel after living his adult life in exile due to his political beliefs. Sultana (1987) is an experimental coming-of-age tale set in 1950s Cold War Jordan. The narrative follows Jeries as he remembers his adolescence torn between the village and his boarding school in the capital. He tells the intergenerational tale of the indomitable Sultana and her daughter Amira, women from the village whose embrace of their sexual power challenges their society’s customs and attitudes. They lay at the heart of a scandalous conspiracy that leaves Jeries faced with an ultimatum: his ideals or his love. The novel intricately weaves the memories of passion, politics, smuggling, and extortion that forced Jeries from Jordan. The novel’s engagement with these loaded themes and its eroticism guaranteed the novel’s censorship in Jordan until after Halasa’s death in 1989.