Egyptian novelist, doctor and militant writer on Arab women's
problems and their struggle for liberation, Nawal el Saadawi was
born in the village of Kafr Tahla. Refusing to accept the
limitations imposed by both religious and colonial oppression on
most women of rural origin, she qualified as a doctor in 1955 and
rose to become Egypt's Director of Public Health. Since she began
to write over 30 years ago, her books have concentrated on women.
In 1972, her first work of non fiction, Women and Sex, evoked the
antagonism of highly placed political and theological authorities,
and the Ministry of Health was pressurised into dismissing her.
Under similar pressures she lost her post as Chief Editor of a
health journal and as Assistant General Secretary in the Medical
Association in Egypt. From 1973 to 1976 she worked on researching
women and neurosis in the Ain Shams University's Faculty of
Medicine; and from 1979 to 1980 she was the United Nations Advisor
for the Women's Programme in Africa (ECA) and Middle East (ECWA).
Later in 1980, as a culmination of the long war she had fought for
Egyptian women's social and intellectual freedom, an activity that
had closed all avenues of official jobs to her, she was imprisoned
under the Sadat regime. She has since founded the Arab Women's
Solidarity Association and devoted her time to being a writer,
journalist and worldwide speaker on women's issues.
With the publication by Zed Books in 1980 of The Hidden Face of
Eve: Women in the Arab World, English language readers were first
introduced to the work of this major writer. Zed Books has also
published four of her previous novels, Woman at Point Zero (1983),
God Dies by the Nile (1985), The Circling Song (1989) and Searching
(1991) as well as a collection of her non-fiction writings The
Nawal El Saadawi Reader (1997). She has received three literary
awards.
'Nawal El Saadawi writes with a directness and passion.' - New York Times Book Review
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