I'm not generally a reader of biographies, but when I saw that Ayaan Hirsi Ali had written one, I just had to read it. 

Ali came to international prominence in 2004, with the murder of film-maker Theo Van Gogh. He was killed by a Muslim fanatic for daring to making a film with Ali about women and Islam. A long letter, addressed to Ali and stabbed into his chest with a butcher's knife said, among other things, "You're next". Initially, the Dutch government swung into action and gave Ali full protection, moving her around from safe house to safe house, country to country, much as the UK did for Salman Rushdie. But then political interests in Holland stripped her of her Dutch citizenship and forced her into hiding at her own expense, eventually resulting in a move to the USA, where she currently resides, speaking out against Islam and for the rights of Muslim women.

This book is the story of her life and the events leading up to Van Gogh's murder, from her early childhood in Somalia to her teen years in Kenya and her flight to Holland as a refugee. Throughout, she never flinches from including the most graphic details, from a harrowing account of her genital mutilation (or circumcision, or excision, or whatever politically-correct culturally-relativist euphemism you want to use for it) to the Muslim teacher who beat the Q'ranic teachings into her so hard she nearly died of a fractured skull, to the moments of joy and love she experienced with early boyfriends and friends and protectors in Africa and Europe. 

Initially, Ali tried hard to be a good Muslim woman and to follow the dictates of the Prophet to the letter - but as she matured, both physically and in her ability to reason, she found that she could not reconcile Islam with what she knew to be true about the world, so gradually she became an atheist - and earned, thereby, the rejection of her family and the condemnation of Islamists all over the world, culminating in the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the threats to her own life.

As an account of a remarkable life, this book stands out; but it is even more powerful as an indictment of Islam, and in particular Islam's attitude to and teachings about women. If you care about women, and the future of the world in the face of the threat of Islam, you really need to read this book.