Nawal El Saadawi

Author profile

born

October 27, 1931 in Kafr Tahla, Egypt

gender

female

website

http://www.nawalsaadawi.net/

genre

Nonfiction, Women & Gender Studies, Biographies & Memoirs

About this author

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Nawal El Saadawi (Arabic: نوال السعداوي) 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 resu...more Nawal El Saadawi (Arabic: نوال السعداوي) 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. (less)

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Nawal El Saadawi's Blog

Nawal El Saadawi isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but she does have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from her feed.

Zeina by Nawal El Saadawi – review - The Guardian

Zeina by Nawal El Saadawi – review
The Guardian
By Jane Housham by Nawal El-Saadawi El Saadawi's training as a psychiatrist perhaps helped her to write this disturbing, oneiric novel in which the sanity of Bodour, a well-to-do Egyptian woman, gives way to frightening psychosis. As a young woman, ...

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Published on June 03, 2011 23:05 • 71 views

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Books by Nawal El Saadawi

Average rating: 3.75 · 2,836 ratings · 467 reviews · 54 distinct works

	Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi, Sherif Hetata (Translator) 3.81 avg rating — 1,680 ratings — published 1975 — 13 editions	My rating:
	Memoirs from the Women's Prison by Nawal El Saadawi, Marilyn Booth (Translator) 3.71 avg rating — 213 ratings — published 1983 — 5 editions	My rating:
	Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal El Saadawi, Catherine Cobham (Translator), نوال السعداوي 3.51 avg rating — 202 ratings — published 1958 — 6 editions	My rating:
	God Dies by the Nile 3.83 avg rating — 126 ratings — 6 editions	My rating:
	The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World by Nawal El Saadawi, Sherif Hetata (Translator) 4.04 avg rating — 113 ratings — published 1980 — 8 editions	My rating:
	A Daughter of Isis: The Autobiography of Nawal El Saadawi by Nawal El Saadawi, Sherif Hetata (Translator) 3.79 avg rating — 66 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:
	Walking Through Fire: A Life of Nawal El Saadawi by Nawal El Saadawi, Sherif Hetata 3.89 avg rating — 46 ratings — published 2002 — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Fall of the Imam 3.49 avg rating — 71 ratings — 8 editions	My rating:
	The Innocence of the Devil by Nawal El Saadawi, Sherif Hetata (Translator) 3.46 avg rating — 39 ratings — published 1994 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Woman At Point Zero ;And The Circling Song 4.17 avg rating — 23 ratings — published 1994	My rating:

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Quotes by Nawal El Saadawi

“They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.”
I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

33 people liked it

“Yet not for a single moment did I have any doubts about my own integrity and honour as a woman. I knew that my profession had been invented by men, and that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

22 people liked it

“All the men I did get to know, every single man of them, has filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

18 people liked it

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