"Rania Zada is the very best kind of writer: vivid, insightful and unrepentingly honest. Hers is a voice worth listening to."--Hope Edelman

Revealing the intense emotional and psychological toll that stripping takes on the women who are part of it, Egyptian Exotica: A Memoir of Dancing Naked is the story of Egyptian-born Rania Zada, and her years as a professional dancer in the upscale and not-so-upscale strip clubs of San Francisco and New Orleans. Interspersed with Rania's memories of growing up in the Middle East, including her troubled relationship with her mother and her estrangement from her father, this gritty memoir removes the glamorous mask to show what the dancer's life is really like. An emotionally powerful story of one women's journey into and out of dancing, Egyptian Exotica is an intimate and revealing look at what goes on behind the curtain, where the bright lights don't shine.

Rania Zada was born in Cairo, Egypt and has lived in Kuwait, England, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans and Florida (in that order.) She worked in 22 clubs during her four-year career as a stripper. Following her "retirement," Rania attended the UCLA Writer's Program in Non-Fiction, where she began writing Egpytian Exotica.