The internationally renowned author and activist for women's rights in Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was born in Somalia in 1969, just days after the imposition of Siad Barre's dictatorship. She was raised as a Muslim and at the age of five suffered the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation. Her father was a leading figure of the opposition, and during the dictatorship, he was imprisoned but managed to escape.

Hirsi Ali first met him at the age of eight in Saudi Arabia, where her family sought refuge following the outbreak of the Somali civil war, and later moved successively to Ethiopia and Kenya, where for a time she followed the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1992, at the age of twenty-two, to avoid a marriage imposed by her father, Hirsi Ali fled to the Netherlands, where she requested and received political asylum.

She worked as an interpreter, studied political science, and became actively involved in advocating for the rights of Muslim women in Europe, which led to her election as a member of the Dutch Parliament in 2003. In 2004, she collaborated with Dutch director Theo van Gogh on "Submission,” a short film addressing the abuse of women in Islam, which was condemned as blasphemous by radical Islamists, resulting in van Gogh being brutally murdered, shocking not only the Netherlands but the entire world.

In Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali recounts this true and captivating story: the story of her life. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been included in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people worldwide and has been repeatedly awarded for her work in support of human rights.

She founded the AHA Foundation, a nonprofit humanitarian organization for women's rights, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and lives in the United States with her husband, British historian and author Niall Ferguson.