Cover of Kingdom in Motion by Sven Otto Littorin — a desert at dusk beneath a deep blue sky

Coming 1 August 2026

Kingdom
in Motion

A Personal Account from Inside Saudi Arabia's Revolution

Sven Otto Littorin

Six Saudi women on the front page of the country's main newspaper. Three of them with their hair uncovered. In 2014 the photograph would have been unthinkable. In 2019 it was a novelty. In 2026, unremarkable.

How did this country get here in less than a decade — what did it cost, and where does it go next?

Get the launch email What it's about

Out 1 August 2026 · in paperback, e-book, and audiobook

The Book

Three Saudi Arabias,
and the gap between them

The Saudi Arabia of 2026 is not the country most Europeans think it is. In ten years it has stopped being the country they imagined in 2016 — and it is not yet the country it intends to be by 2040. Kingdom in Motion is the book about the gap between those three Saudi Arabias.

It is neither a glossy travel feature nor a human-rights report. It is a personal account of one of the most significant national transformations of our lifetime, written by someone who has watched it happen from the inside — positive about the achievement, and honest about the cost.

Neither Monte Carlo in the desert, nor Mordor with air conditioning. Something more interesting — and more consequential — than either.

A civilization spanning millennia, a religious tradition fourteen centuries old, a three-hundred-year alliance between sword and pulpit, and a hundred-year nation-state — all trying to become a different country before the oil money runs out.

Inside the Book

The story, decade by decade

1727The Founding
Muhammad ibn Saud takes power in the oasis town of Diriyah, near modern Riyadh, and founds the first Saudi state — the origin the kingdom now marks as its founding.
1744The Pact
The alliance between sword and pulpit — the pact binding the House of Saud to a puritan religious movement, and the three-hundred-year pendulum, swinging between strict and tolerant Islam, that runs through everything since.
1979The Siege
The seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca — the strangest story in modern Saudi history, and the parenthesis of religious rigor the country is only now closing.
2016The Bet
A young crown prince stakes his political life on Vision 2030: weaning the country off oil before the oil weans itself off the country.
2017The Ritz
The night at the Ritz-Carlton that restructured the kingdom's elite — how power was consolidated and the old rent-seeking networks were cleared.
2018The Opening
The women who suddenly drove. The cinemas that suddenly opened. A society renegotiating, in real time, what it means to be Saudi.
2026The World
The geopolitical hedge between Washington and Beijing, the aftermath of the Iran war, and the petrodollar that didn't quite end.
NextThe Open Questions
Growth has come from adding people and capital, not yet from using them more productively — and the book won’t gloss over where the kingdom falls short of its own standards: the death penalty, the limits on dissent, the treatment of migrant workers, and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

The Vantage Point

Written from inside the room

A former Swedish Minister for Employment, Sven Otto Littorin was among the first foreigners ever directly employed by the Saudi Ministry of Labor. He has spent nine years inside the rooms where the pace of Vision 2030 is set — the majlis, the ministry, the meetings in Riyadh — and writes as someone close enough to know the place, yet still outsider enough to translate it.

His account of the Arabia that was, the Arabia that is, and the Arabia that may yet be.

Portrait of author Sven Otto Littorin

The Author

Sven Otto Littorin

Littorin is co-founder and Managing Partner of The Vision Bridge, a go-to-market facilitator for foreign companies expanding into the Middle East, with a primary focus on Saudi Arabia. A former Swedish Minister for Employment, he chairs several listed Swedish companies and was founding chairman of the Emirati-Swedish Business Council.

He holds a B.Sc. in Economics and Business from Lund University and has been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. Kingdom in Motion is his eighth book.

Advance Praise

Praise for the book

“Saudi Arabia is one of the most consequential transformation stories of our time — and most of the world is reading it wrong. Sven Littorin has spent nearly a decade on the ground there, and it shows. Kingdom in Motion cuts through the clichés with clarity, intellectual honesty, and a rare insider perspective. Required reading for anyone serious about understanding where the world is heading.”

Erik Bolinder

Erik BolinderSwedish AI Evangelist and founder

“Littorin chronicles the structural reality of Saudi Arabia’s transition with the precision of an insider’s knowledge. He goes beyond the highly visible social decompression to analyze the core economic challenge: the intense race to translate massive capital and labor mobilization into sustained long-term transformation. By addressing the constraints of a state-driven investment model and the institutional paradox of economic inclusion without political inclusion, this book isolates the real variables that will really matter. An important addition to any reading list to understand Saudi Arabia.”

Anders Borg

Anders BorgFormer Minister of Finance, Sweden

“For those of us tracking capital flows and geopolitical risk, Saudi Arabia has moved from a footnote to a focal point. What Littorin offers here is something the financial community rarely gets: genuine depth — historical, cultural, and strategic — delivered without ideology or agenda. Kingdom in Motion is the book I will be recommending to clients and colleagues.”

Eric Sarasin

Eric SarasinFormer Deputy CEO, Sarasin Bank, Switzerland

Coming 1 August 2026

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Kingdom in Motion publishes on 1 August 2026, in paperback, e-book, and audiobook. Leave your email and I'll send you the link to order it the day it's out.

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