"More than any other woman, Nawal El Saadawi has come has come to embody the trials of Arab feminism."The New York TimesBodour, a distinguished literary critic and university professor, carries with her a dark secret. As a young university student, she fell in love with a political activist and gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Zeina, whom she abandoned on the streets of Cairo.Zeina grows up to become one of Egypt's most beloved entertainers, despite being deprived of a name and a home. In contrast, Bodour remains trapped in a loveless marriage, pining for her daughter. In an attempt to find solace she turns to literature, writing a fictionalized account of her life. But when the novel goes missing, Bodour is forced on a journey of self discovery, reliving and reshaping her past and her future.Will Bodour ever discover who stole the novel? Is there any hope of her being reunited with Zeina?Nawal El Saadawi is an internationally renowned Egyptian writer, feminist, and psychiatrist. Her works have been translated into more than thirty languages.
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.
It is interesting reading this book after discovering that El Sadwaal camped out in Tahir Square. Zeina is a book about the roles or lack of them that men and women are forced to play. The primary focus is on the treatment of women.
At first glance the novel appears to be a story about Bodour and her illegitimate daughter Zeina, the novel is more a story of alternating viewpoints, mostly those of various women, but every so often a view of a man creeps in. It also deals with how religion can be used to subjugate, not just in Islam but also in Christianity and Judaism.
The use of language is beautiful and pointed. From a statement like 鈥淗ow He [God] command a woman to desire her husband when he dominated her鈥� to a description like 鈥淗er [Zeina鈥檚] eyes were two blue volcanic stones, two dark flames that changed with the movement of the earth around the sun鈥�.
If you are not bothered by the shifting viewpoints and lack of traditional structure this is a lovely book.
Zeina follows the lives of Zeina bint Zeinat, the biological daughter of Bodour, Bodour's other daughter Magheeda, Bodour's husband Zacharia, Bodour's cousin "the emir," and a whole cast of characters who appear, disappear, re-appear, die, live again, or are lost forever. At 19, Bodour becomes pregnant with a fellow protester, Nassim. He is killed shortly thereafter (don't worry, that's not a spoiler). Afraid of the scandal of having an illegitimate child, Bodour abandons her daughter, Zeina, on the street. Zeina grows up to become one of the foremost performers in Egypt, mesmerizing fans and critics alike - appearing and disappearing as a mirror by which the subjects of the book analyze their own successes and failures.
Really, though, this book is a glimpse into the mind of a woman who is dead while still alive. The narrative is disjointed and dream-like, returning over and over again to a few snippets of experience. It is unclear when in time certain passages occur, and often a 2-page passage of plot will end with the person waking up. It's a bit of a maddening read, but so lyrical - and so much like memory itself - that the recursiveness is an asset.
That's not to say that the book didn't have flaws. El Saadawi is definitely didactic. Just as there are snipets of experience that appear over and over, there are viewpoints that do as well. The senseless violence of men, the devaluation of women in religion (not just Islam), how men want to control women. It gets a little tiring. The men in the story (except for the few who die too early to become corrupted) rape anyone and everyone: children, their wives, sex workers, servants, and others' wives. Only in the last part of the book does the narrative go beyond the senseless violence men do to women, and on to the agency of women. Which is not to say that senseless violence by men is not worth writing about, but that as a reader I grew frustrated with the female characters' clouded minds.
Considering that there are no chapters, multiple points of view which are constantly changing from past and present, I am actually amazed I enjoyed this novel as much as I did. Once I tried trying to figure out everything in a linear way I could appreciate the writing so much more. If you are reading this review you have unfortunately most likely read the description. If you want to read this book have not yet read the description above, don't! There are spoilers! One of the things mentioned is only confirmed in the later half of the book and the incident described does not even happen until the last chapter! Whoever wrote this obviously did not even bother to read this novel and shame on them!
Zeina seems to be one of those Marmite novels - you either love it or hate it! Rather like the eponymous Zeina Bint Zeinat herself: loved by the general public, hated by the Islamist regime. 欧宝娱乐 reviewers seem fairly equally divided between these extremes, reflected in the overall rating. There is a plot, outlined in the 欧宝娱乐 synopsis, but the timeline is erratic, to say the least! We leap forwards and backwards in time, and between reality and imagination as we are swept along in a stream of consciousness text. There are repetitions and inconsistencies galore, and some frankly rather odd metaphors, but always in the background we have the city of Cairo itself, with the Nile flowing through it, and the music of Zeina Bint Zeinat and Mariam's band, formed of street children and named after Zeina's primary school music teacher. You may love it or hate it, but do give it a try! You might be one of he lucky ones!
I won Zeina in a 欧宝娱乐 giveaway. I was intrigued by the description and I really, really wanted to enjoy this. Sadly, I decided to abandon this after reading the first quarter of the book.
Reading the initial pages led to me to think I would enjoy Zeina. I thought the language was beautiful and lyrical. But quickly I found myself having trouble following the story. The author frequently switches the third person narrative point of view from one character to another, and through different times. While I can appreciate this device, I did not appreciate it in this novel. I kept having to backtrack to figure which character what was happening to and when. Eventually I had to give up.
I think had this been a short story, I would have enjoyed it more. But I really could not get into the story or characters. Reading any more than the first quarter of this book would have been a waste of my time.
I love the language used- very poetic and the first half of the book is superb. The themes examined are all relevant- especially the expos茅 of how religion is used to justify all kinds of corruption & depravity. However, I found the plot rather difficult to follow & the book's namesake 'Zeina' to be a very one dimensional character. In fact, all the characters were underdeveloped which made it difficult to maintain interest in the novel. I have great respect for Nawal el-Saadawi but I find her attack on men rather too much....I mean there are SOME guys who don't rape and molest everything that come their way- even if that doesn't always seem to be the case when walking on the average sidewalk in Cairo. I also find her idealisation of revolution rather naive...the finale of the book- set against the 2011 revolution is extremely underdeveloped and is a poor ending to an otherwise good novel.
Amazing book. Would have gotten 5 stars except: -The lack of chapterization made it difficult to read, especially with the multiple POVs and the jumps across time and current events v.s. memories - The ending felt incomplete. Even 1 or 2 more pages would have made a world of a difference