Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast on the BBC World Service,

first-hand accounts of events that have shaped our world.

I'm Mike Lanchin. Today we're going back to 2011 when the Saudi novelist Raja Alim made history

by becoming the first woman to win the prestigious international booker Prize for Arabic Fiction.

I've been speaking to Raja about her achievement.

The only thing you can know for certain in this entire book is where the body was found,

the lane of many heads. The first thing you should know though is that it's not me who's

foolish enough to try to write about a

place like the Lane of many heads. This is the Lane itself speaking.

Raja Alim's prize-winning novel, The Dove's necklace, is an unruly and provocative

story set in Mecca, a city grappling with changes that evoke many of the challenges facing a modern day Islamic society.

I always felt Mecca is talking to me, talking through me with its sounds,

the dof-nichlet, it's about the disappearance of a world, a magical world, to become a modern world.

And the themes of Rajas novel are wrapped up in a traditional detective story. The book begins with the discovery

of the body of a young naked woman in a Mecca alleyway, the lane of many heads. No one comes forward to claim or identify the victim. In a clever

device Raja turns the lane itself into the narrator for much of the first half of

the novel. I am that narrow alley in Mecca,

...