Nawal El Saadawi (1931–2021,) also spelled Nawāl al-Saʿdāwī, was an Egyptian public health physician, psychiatrist, feminist author, and advocate of women’s rights. She campaigned against the subjugation of women, including genital mutilation, since the early 1970s. This “Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World” dedicated 50 plays, novels, and short story collections to women’s political and sexual rights.
Born in Kafr Ṭaḥlah, Egypt, El Saadawi was educated at Cairo University and Columbia University. She worked as a physician and a public health official. Her Al-marʾah wa al-jins (1969; Women and Sex) was condemned by religious and political authorities, and El Saadawi was jailed. She was imprisoned in 1981 where she wrote Mudhakkirāt fī sijn al-nisāʾ (1984; Memoirs from the Women’s Prison) on a roll of toilet paper using a smuggled cosmetic pencil.
El Saadawi’s outspoken views continued to face frequent legal challenges from political and religious opponents, including apostasy accusations. She founded the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association (AWSA) in 1982 and later served as editor of its publication, Al-nūn.
El Saadawi’s novels, short stories, and nonfiction deal chiefly with the status of Arab women, as in Mudhakkirāt tabībah, Al-khayt wa al-jidār (1972; The Thread and the Wall,) Al-wajh al-ʿarī lī al-marʾah al-arabiyyah (1977; The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World,) Jannāt wa Iblīs (1992; Jannāt and Iblīs,) Al-ḥubb fī zaman al-nafṭ (1993; Love in the Kingdom of Oil,) and Al-riwāyah (2004; The Novel.)
El Saadawi is one of the most widely translated contemporary Egyptian writers, and her work is available in thirty languages. Her biographies are A Daughter of Isis, Autobiography (1999) and Walking Through Fire (2002,) both reissued in 2008.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Nawal El Saadawi
Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.
—Nawal El Saadawi
Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives. They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.
—Nawal El Saadawi
This is everyone’s struggle—whether against men in the family, or against capitalism. It’s power. I don’t think that people in power can be convinced by words or articles. They will never give it up by choice. Even a husband in the house, no—power has to be taken with power…
—Nawal El Saadawi
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