The well of life ;: And, The thread : two short novels

El-Saadawi, Nawal

Methuen Publishing, Ltd.

Innocence of the Devil El Saadawi

Reference

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Often likened to Rigoberta Menchu and Nadine Gordimer, Nawal El Saadawi is one of the world's leading feminist authors. Director of Health and Education in Cairo, she was summarily dismissed from her post in 1972 for her political writing and activities. In 1981 she was imprisoned by Anwar Sadat for alleged "crimes against the State" and was not released until after his assassination. Memoirs from the Women's Prison offers both firsthand witness to women's resistance to state violence and fascinating insights into the formation of women's community. Saadawi describes how political prisoners, both secular intellectuals and Islamic revivalists, forged alliances to demand better conditions and to maintain their sanity in the confines of their cramped cell. Saadawi's haunting prose makes Memoirs an important work of twentieth-century literature. Recognized as a classic of prison writing, it touches all who are concerned with political oppression, intellectual freedom, and personal dignity.

Memoirs from the Women's Prison (Literature of the Middle East)

History

Middle East

University of California Press

Nawal El Saadawi's books are known for their powerful denunciation of patriarchy in its many forms: social, political, and religious. Set in an insane asylum, The Innocence of the Devil is a complex and chilling novel that recasts the relationships of God and Satan, of good and evil. Intertwining the lives of two young women as they discover their sexual and emotional powers, Saadawi weaves a dreamlike narrative that reveals how the patriarchal structures of Christianity and Islam are strikingly similar: physical violation of women is not simply a social or political phenomenon, it is a religious one as well. While more measured in tone than Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, Saadawi's novel is similar in its linguistic, literary, and philosophical richness. Evoking a world of pain and survival that may be unfamiliar to many readers, it speaks in a universal voice that reaches across cultures and is the author's most potent weapon.

The Innocence of the Devil (Literature of the Middle East)

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Contemporary

An examination of the position of women in contemporary Arab society explores topics such as marriage, divorce, and Arab feminists

The Hidden Face of Eve : Women in the Arab World (English and Arabic Edition)

Politics & Social Sciences

Women's Studies

Beacon Pr

Bahiah Shaheen, an eighteen-year-old medical student and daughter of a prominent Egyptian public official, finds the male students in her class coarse and alien. Her father, too, seems to belong to a race apart. Frustrated by her hard-working, well-behaved, middle-class public persona, her meeting with a stranger at a gallery one day proves to be the beginning of her road to self-discovery and the start of her realisation that fulfilment in life is indeed possible. Two Women in One is the story of countless women in the Third World, and speaks of their quest for emancipation and dignity.

Two Women in One

Saqi Books

Rebelling against the constraints of family and society, a young Egyptian woman decides to study medicine, becoming the only woman in a class of men. Her encounters with the other students – as well as with male and female corpses in the autopsy room – intensify her search for identity. She realises that men are not gods, as her mother had taught her, that science cannot explain everything, and that she cannot be satisfied by living a life purely of the mind.After a brief and unhappy marriage, she throws herself into her work, becoming a successful and wealthy doctor. But at the same time, she becomes more aware of the injustice and hypocrisy in society. She comes to find fulfilment, not in isolation, but through her relationship with others.This novel will enhance Nawal El Saadawi’s international reputation as a writer of power and compassion, deeply committed to the rights of Arab women.

Memoirs of Woman Doctor

Rebelling against the constraints of family and society, a young Egyptian woman decides to study medicine. Her encounters with the other students intensify her search for identity. She comes to find fulfilment not in isolation, but through her relationships with others. 

Memoirs of A Woman Doctor

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

A woman disappears without a trace. The police commissioner investigating the case enquires: was she of dubious morals, was she the rebellious sort? Nobody understands how a woman could simply walk away from it all, leaving husband and home behind. After all, in the ‘kingdom of oil’ where ‘His Majesty’ reigns supreme, no woman has ever dared disobey the command of men. When she finally reappears there is a blurring of the distinctions between the men in her life. She leaves one to become the wife of another, and when she eventually returns to her first husband, she finds he has taken a new wife. In many ways, to her all men are one and the same … In this rich novel El Saadawi dares anew to confront major issues and questions surrounding a woman’s role and position in a repressive, patriarchal order.

Love in the Kingdom Of Oil

British & Irish

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Books by El-Saadawi, Nawal