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Title: A Sinner in Mecca
Subtitle: A Gay Muslim's Hajj of Defiance
Author: Parvez Sharma
Narrator: Parvez Sharma
Format: Unabridged
Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-14-17
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:
The Hajj pilgrimage is a journey every Muslim is commanded by God to go on at least once in a lifetime if they are able and, like millions, Parvez Sharma believes his spiritual salvation lies at Islam's ground zero, Mecca. But unlike the journeys of his fellow Muslims, the consequences of his own could be deadly.
In A Sinner in Mecca, author and filmmaker Parvez chronicles his pilgrimage as a very openly gay Muslim to Saudi Arabia, where Islam's heart beats...and where being true to himself is punishable by death. Risking his life, Parvez embarks on a Jihad of the self-filming his experience along the way. Already under fire for his documentary A Jihad for Love, which looks at the coexistence of Islam and homosexuality, he would undoubtedly face savage punishment if exposed - from being thrown off a cliff to public beheading.
Parvez's odyssey is at once audacious, global, and remarkable. He meets everyone from extremists to explorers of the spiritual kind, and the world they open up is frightening...yet breathtaking. In Mecca, Parvez comes out to a pilgrim, who then asks him why he would want to be part of something that wants no part of him. This book is his answer to this question and many more.

Members Reviews:
Intricate and Beautiful
Like its author, this book resists easy labels and classification. Combining elements of family memoir, political analysis, history, exegesis, cloak-and-dagger meetings, and gay hookups, "A Sinner in Mecca" exposes religious intolerance -- and its economic and colonial underpinnings -- and celebrates the beauty of faith in its most intimate, personal form. An antidote to 'soundbite journalism,' this book should be read by anyone who wants to better understand the miraculous complexity of the world.

I think I expected more...
Having not seen the film, and not knowing much about the author, other than what I googled, I expected a lot from this tale. I'm from an Asian background myself and involved with things LGBT, but, I had to take this with more than a pinch of salt.
Yes, I'm, from a distance, familiar with Hajj and Islam, having grown up in a country with a large Muslim population, and I'm also a little familiar with the Mutaween and Wahhabism, having had to research and fact-check for an author, so those aspects of the tale do seem pretty accurate. However, I am not convinced as to the author's claims/inferences about the multitude of closeted gay men that he claims to have come upon. And, I couldn't quite believe in his supposed new-devotion to Islam, or in his supposed love for his husband, given that he was contemplating an encounter with a shopkeeper, during Hajj, and only the thought of being caught by the Mutaween prevented it.

It reads like a thriller
I was lucky to pre-order and get it a week ago. It reads like a thriller. I have been a fan of the author's film work and I expected the book would be like the film of the same title. I was proven wrong. It's a very well-written memoir interwoven with current politics in the US and in the Middle East, Indian sub-continent and elsewhere in the Muslim world. He makes it clear that the so-called "war" between the West and Islam will not be over in this generation or the next.