Overview
'Against the white sand, the contours of my father's body were well defined, emphasized its existence in a world where everything was liquid, where the blue of the sea melted into the blue of the sky with nothing between. This independent existence was to become the outer world, the world of my father, of land, country, religion, language, moral codes. It was to become the world around me. A world made of male bodies in which my female body lived.' Nawal El Saadawi has been pilloried, censored, imprisoned and exiled for her refusal to accept the oppressions imposed on women by gender and class. For her, writing and action have been inseperable and this is reflected in some of the most evocative and disturbing novels ever written about Arab women. Born in a small Egyptian village in 1931, she eluded the grasp of suitors before whom her family displayed her when she was still ten years old and went on to qualify as a medical doctor. In 1969, she published her first work of non-fiction, Women and Sex; in 1972, she was dismissed from her profession because of her political activism. From then on there was no respite: imprisonment under Sadat in 1981 was the culmination of the long struggle she had waged for Egyptian women's social and intellectual freedom; in 1992, her name appeared on a death list issued by a fundamentalist group after which she went into exile for five years. Since then, she has devoted her time to writing novels and essays and to her activities as a worldwide speaker on women’s issues. A Daughter of Isis is the autobiography of this extraordinary woman. In it she paints a sensuously textured portrait of the childhood that produced the freedom fighter. We see how she moulded her own creative power into a weapon - how, from an early age, the use of words became an act of rebellion against injustice.
Full Product Details
Author: Nawal El Saadawi , Sherif Hetata , Bettina Aptheker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint: Zed Books Ltd
Edition: Second Edition
Dimensions:
Width: 12.90cm
, Height: 12.90cm
, Length: 19.80cm
Weight: 0.476kg
ISBN: 9781848132313
ISBN 10: 184813231
Pages: 368
Publication Date: 09 April 2009
Audience:
General/trade
,
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
General
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand 
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Table of Contents
Preface - The Gift 1. Allah and McDonalds 2. The Cry in the Night 3. God Above, Husband Below 4. We Thank God for our Calamities 5. Flying with the Butterflies 6. Killing the Bridegroom 7. Daughter of the Sea 8. My Revolutionary Father 9. The Lost Servant-Girl 10. The Village of Forgotten Employees 11. God Hid Behind the Coat-Stand 12. The Ministry of Nauseation 13. Dreaming of Pianos 14. To the Circus 15. The Singing Man 16. The Whiskered Peasant 17. Uncles, Suitors and other Bloodsuckers 18. A Stove for my Mother 19. Coming to Cairo 20. The Long, Strong Bones of a Horse 21. Love and the Hideous Cat 22. Art Thieves 23. Mad Aunts and Abandoned Babies 24. The House of Desolation 25. The Secret Communist 26. Wasted Lives 27. Cholera, Ageing and Death 28. The Qur'an Betrayed 29. British English and Holy Arabic 30. The Name of Marx 31. The Brush of History Afterword - Living in Resistance
Reviews
This brave book brings to life all too familiar news items from some traditional cultures where women are treated throughout their lives as misfortunes, compared to their brothers; are forcibly clitorectomised, married off at the age of ten. The author fought injustice all her life, suceeded in becoming a doctor... then a writer. In our culture women?s education was fought for by our grandmothers and great-grandmothers; reading this we are reminded not to take our good fortune for granted. This is a book we should all be reading... - Doris Lessing In this book we see how, from an early age, Saadawi combines her love of the Arabic language with her awareness of gender-based oppression to create texts which are as subversive as they are moving... - Modern African Studies
In this book we see how, from an early age, Saadawi combines her love of the Arabic language with her awareness of gender-based oppression to create texts which are as subversive as they are moving. * Modern African Studies * As I finished reading Dr. Nawal's autobiography I felt a sudden sense of loss. I didn't want to leave her. I went back and read the last sections again, and then again, until I remembered how many other books she has written. Then I felt delight that I will be able to return to her words and to her stories, and that so many others will share in them. * Bettina Aptheker * This is a book we should all be reading * Doris Lessing * I think her life has been one long death threat. At a time when nobody else was talking, she spoke the unspeakable. * Margaret Atwood, BBC Imagine *
Author Information
Nawal El Saadawi is a renowned Egyptian writer, novelist and activist. She has published over 40 books, which have been translated into over 30 languages. Nawal El Saadawi graduated from the University of Cairo Medical College in 1955, specializing in psychiatry, and practiced as a medical doctor until taking the position of Director General for Public Health Education in the Ministry of Health. In 1972 she lost her job in the Egyptian government because of her banned book: Woman and Sex. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association (AWSA), the Egyptian Branch of which was outlawed in Egypt in 1991. In 1981 Saadawi was arrested and imprisoned for publicly criticizing President Anwar Sadat's policies. She was released one month after his assassination. Her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list after publishing her novel The Fall of the Imam in Cairo in 1988 and she was obliged to leave her country, to teach in the USA. Other court cases have been raised against both her and her daughter and defeated. In 2008 she defeated a case that demanded the withdrawal of her Egyptian Nationality in response to her play God Resigns at the Summit Meeting. 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. The Hidden Face of Eve was her first book to be translated to English and was published by Zed Books in 1980. Her most recent novel is Zina: The Stolen Novel (2008). Nawal El Saadawi holds more than ten honorary doctorates from different universities in Europe and the USA. Her many prizes and awards include the Great Minds of the Twentieth Century Prize (2003), the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe, the Premi Internacional Catalunya (2004) , and most recently she was the 2007 recipient of The African Literature Association's Fonlon-Nichols Award. Her books are taught in universities across the world.
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