Nawal El Saadawi (Arabic: ) was born in 1931, in a small village outside Cairo. Unusually, she and her brothers and sisters were educated together, and she graduated from the University of Cairo Medical School in 1955, specializing in psychiatry. For two years, she practiced as a medical doctor, both at the university and in her native Tahla.
From 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked as Director General for Public Health Education for the Egyptian government. During this time, she also studied at Columbia University in New York, where she received her Master of Public Health degree in 1966. Her first novel Memoirs of a Woman Doctor was published in Cairo in 1958. In 1972, however, she lost her job in the Egyptian government as a result of political pressure. The magazine, Health, which she had founded and edited for more than three years, was closed down.
From 1973 to 1978 Saadawi worked at the High Institute of Literature and Science. It was at this time that she began to write, in works of fiction and non-fiction, the books on the oppression of Arab women for which she has become famous. Her most famous novel, Woman at Point Zero was published in Beirut in 1973. It was followed in 1976 by God Dies by the Nile and in 1977 by The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World.
In 1981 Nawal El Saadawi publicly criticized the one-party rule of President Anwar Sadat, and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. She was released one month after his assassination. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, which was outlawed in 1991. When, in 1988, her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list, she and her second husband, Sherif Hetata, fled to the USA, where she taught at Duke University and Washington State University. She returned to Egypt in 1996.
In 2004 she presented herself as a candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, with a platform of human rights, democracy and greater freedom for women. In July 2005, however, she was forced to withdraw her candidacy in the face of ongoing government persecution.
Nawal El Saadawi has achieved widespread international recognition for her work. She holds honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso. Her many prizes and awards include the Great Minds of the Twentieth Century Prize, awarded by the American Biographical Institute in 2003, the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe and the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2004. Her books have been translated into over 28 languages worldwide. They are taught in universities across the world.
She now works as a writer, psychiatrist and activist. Her most recent novel, entitled Al Riwaya was published in Cairo in 2004.
4.25 stars A novel by someone who should have won the Nobel prize, but didn鈥檛. El Saadawi examines religious hypocrisy. The novel is set in an unnamed Islamic country and there are two central characters. One is the Imam, a religious leader of a country. He is a cruel hypocrite, imposing standards he doesn鈥檛 maintain himself. The other is Bint Allah (daughter of God), an illegitimate orphan, possibly the daughter of the Imam. The narrative rotates and moves backwards and forwards. It isn鈥檛 linear and revolves around two events. Firstly the stoning of a woman and secondly the assassination of the Imam. The narrative moves between persons and is experimental; the two events are retold and this can be confusing until the reader realises what is going on. Bint Allah is where the real focus lies with her attempts to make sense of it all: 鈥淲e know nothing about our fathers or our mothers. We were called the Children of God, and I was called Bint Allah, the Daughter of God. I had never seen God face to face, yet I thought He was my father and that my mother was His wife.鈥� This is the second book that I have reviewed this week that has been burnt! The role of religion is central and El Saadawi had strong views on religion: 鈥榠f the power of religious groups increases, so does the oppression of women. Women are oppressed in all religions.鈥� This isn鈥檛 easy or straightforward and it has some elements of magic realism and there are links to The Thousand and One Nights. At one level of course The Imam is Sadat but he also represents all religious totalitarianism and male patriarchy. Not an easy read but worthwhile.
A suffocating nightmare of a book, and with good reason. An inescapable labyrinth of patriarchal and religious power returning us again and again to the feel of a knife or a bullet in the back.
A hard read - intellectually and emotionally - though the former is less of an issue when one accepts the dreaming, morphing, returning nature of the text. The latter is as it should be. Listening to such voices should be painful, if for no other reason than to prick us into sympathy and, hopefully, into action.
"As she fell, the question echoed in her mind: Why do you let the criminal go free, and kill the victim?"
This novel is a bit difficult to understand since it was translated for an English speaking audience from the original language. It is full of imagery that is used by the author to show the paradox that is the imam's life. Sadawi writes about the religious scriptures the imam uses to justify his public and private personas. The imam abuses his position to dominate men, women and children - even to the point of believing he himself is God. Difficult read and a book that might have to be read twice for better understanding.
Es una mezcla curiosa. Es posible leer como poes铆a y solamente seguir el ritmo del texto. Al mismo tiempo es un estudio cr铆tico de las religiones - sobre todo islam, la opresi贸n de la mujer y la manipulaci贸n de los analfabetas. Es interesante pero exigente. Hay un narrador externo paralelo a muchos narradores en primera persona. La matanza de una mujer se cuenta una y otra vez en distintos contextos. Es fuerte y algo dif铆cil de seguir, sin embargo, vale mucho la pena. Para mi es un descubrimiento de una gran escritora!
Ummm?? I didn't know how to make sense of this book, is it even a novel? There's no linearity or narrative or rhythm. The story, the characters keep mutating and shifting until it's not a story anymore, until you can't tell the difference between characters. As a feminist text, I understand its gravity, but perhaps it is better a read in its original Arabic.
Ir labs, ja pat墨k st膩stu bezgal墨ga atk膩rto拧an膩s un da啪膩di t膿li, kas paties墨b膩 ir viens t膿ls (man pat墨k), k膩 ar墨 nav iebildumu pret niknumu par taisno lietu (vot ar to man gr奴t膩k).
This book gives and takes and reading it feels like having a moral war with your conscience. Does that make sense? If not, it feels like having a therapy session, you think of all the possibilities and the Therapist tells you, 'am here to listen, and you can think of this.'
The story begins at the big feast and we are introduced to Bint Allah, an illegitimate child who is running from the world. This big feast is attended by the Imam whose word is law and the people believe he is God's mouthpiece, it is also at this event that the Imam is murdered, but we keep going back to it because no one is certain of his death since he always has his bodyguards act as his double. There is also the recurrent death of Bint Allah that depicts her being stabbed with a knife, stoned, or stoned and buried in a hole to die and the narrative continues.
Nawal, the author, writes as though she is in a maze. Her prose jumps from one character to another sometimes its a character's conscience and sometimes it is the law, but one thing is certain, it is not consistent. If you are used to flow, then you will be frustrated by this story. It depicts the struggle of women at a time when the men do as they please and the women suffer the consequences. If a woman is accused of adultery she is stoned to death in the name of honor while the man she was with helps in throwing the stones. But, in this story there is Gawaher, who happens to be the mistress of not only the Imam, but the Great Writer and Chief of Security. Bint Allah is constantly asking the people out to stone her why they accuse the victim and let the criminal go, which begs the question of what is just when some people are condemned and others set free?
This book is more of a collection of events as narrated by different characters in an attempt to get the reader to question his/her actions, beliefs and more so not to follow blindly what one person decrees in the name of a higher being.