El Saadawi Nawal - The Essential Nawal El Saadawi: a Reader

ZED ESSENTIAL FEMINISTS

Zed Essential Feminists is an ambitious series of readers presenting the major work of some of the worlds most significant feminist thinkers in individual volumes. Oriented around the understanding that feminist voices continue to make some of the most important critical interventions in progressive political debates around the world, the series celebrates the power of these voices and gathers together important work often unavailable elsewhere.

Zed Essential Feminists sets itself against the common assertion that we are living in a post-feminist era in which the major battles of the late-twentieth-century womens movement have ceased to be relevant. Each volume offers the reader a comprehensive selection of writings that will both introduce and provide a complete and essential reference to an essential feminist voice.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Adele Newson-Horst is a professor of English at Missouri State University. She earned her B.A. degree at Spelman College, an M.A. at Eastern Michigan University, and a Ph.D. at Michigan State University. Her most recent publications and research focus on Nawal El Saadawi; The Dramatic Literature of Nawal El Saadawi was published by Saqi Books in 2009.

The Essential Nawal El Saadawi

A Reader

EDITED BY ADELE NEWSON-HORST

Zed Books

LONDON & NEW YORK

The Essential Nawal El Saadawi: A Reader was first published in 2010 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA

This ebook edition was first published in 2013

www.zedbooks.co.uk

Editorial Copyright Adele Newson-Horst
Copyright in this Collection Nawal El Saadawi

The right of Adele Newson-Horst to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset in Monotype Bulmer by illuminati, Grosmont
Cover designed by Lucy Morton at illuminati
Index by John Barker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available

ISBN 978 1 84813 902 2

Contents

About Nawal El Saadawi

NAWAL EL SAADAWI is a renowned Egyptian writer, novelist and fighter for the rights of women and the working poor. She started writing in 1944 when she was 13 years old. She has published over forty books, reprinted and reissued in Arabic, and is widely read in her country and all Arab countries. She has achieved widespread international recognition after the translation of her work into over thirty languages. The Hidden Face of Eve was her first book to be translated to English by her husband Sherif Hetata, and was published by Zed Books in 1980.

Nawal El Saadawi was born in Kafr Tahla, a small village by the Nile north of Cairo. She graduated from the University of Cairo Medical College in 1955, specializing in psychiatry. She practised as a medical doctor, both at the university and in Kafr Tahla.

From 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked as director general for public health education in the Ministry of Health. In 1972 she lost her job in the Egyptian government because of her book Women and Sex (1972), which was subsequently banned. In this book she linked health to economics, to politics, to religion, to history, to sexuality and to culture. She was the first medical doctor to fight against the cutting of children under religiouscultural slogans. Her books were censored in Egypt and she had to publish in Lebanon. 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 President Anwar Sadats policies and was arrested and imprisoned. She was released one month after his assassination. In 1982, she established the Arab Womens Solidarity Association (AWSA). The Egyptian Branch of AWSA was outlawed in 1991 by the government. Her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list, after she published her novel The Fall of the Iman in Cairo in 1987. She was obliged to leave her country, teaching at Duke University in Durham, and Washington State University in Seattle. She returned to Egypt in 1997 to continue writing and organizing women. In 2004 she stood as a candidate in the presidential elections in Egypt, but was forced to withdraw her candidacy in the face of government persecution. She declared that her move was symbolic, to expose the lack of democracy.

In 2001 a court case was raised against Saadawi, accusing her of apostasy and demanding her divorce by force from her husband. She won the case with the support of human rights organizations in Egypt and internationally. She won other court cases against her and her daughter Dr Mona Helmy, a poet and a writer living in Egypt, through increasing support inside and outside of their country, the last of which, in 2008, demanded the withdrawal of her Egyptian nationality after her play God Resigns at the Summit Meeting was published by Madbouli in Cairo in 2007.

Nawal El Saadawi holds more than ten honorary doctorates. Her many awards include the Great Minds of the Twentieth Century Prize awarded by the American Biographical Institute in 2003, the NorthSouth Prize from the Council of Europe and the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2004. Most recently she was the 2007 recipient in the USA of the African Literature Associations FonlonNichols Award, which is given annually to an African writer for excellence in creative writing and for contributions to the struggles for human rights and freedom of expression. Her books are taught in universities across the world.

Nawal El Saadawi now works as a writer, psychiatrist and activist. Her most recent novel is Zina, The Stolen Novel (2008).

Timeline