Virgins of Paradise

Virgins of Paradise is a novel by the American writer Barbara Wood, published in 1993 and set in Cairo.

The Rasheed family is prominent, and the sisters are expected to marry in the way their mother and grandmother did; the veil and the separation of the women's quarters are part of the house they grow up in. Jasmine and Camelia both refuse, and they refuse differently: Jasmine leaves Egypt and becomes a doctor in America, while Camelia stays and makes a career as a dancer, which the family regards as worse. The novel follows them across decades, through the politics of a country that changes several times over, and through the marriages and children the sisters have and the ones they avoid. Wood writes the household as a place with an order of its own, and the rebellion of the two women is first against their grandmother and only later against the state.

It is one of the author's long family novels, and it was written after her earlier books set in other countries.