Nawal El Saadawi is a significant and broadly influential feminist writer, activist, physician, and psychiatrist. Born in 1931 in Egypt, her writings focus on women in Islam. Well beyond the Arab world, from Woman at Point Zero to The Fall of the Imam and her prison memoirs, El Saadawi’s fiction and nonfiction works have earned her a reputation as an author who has provided a powerful voice in feminist debates centering on the Middle East.
Off Limits presents a selection of El Saadawi’s most recent recollections and reflections in which she considers the role of women in Egyptian and wider Islamic society, the inextricability of imperialism from patriarchy, and the meeting points of East and West. These thoughtful and wide-reaching pieces leave no stone unturned and no view unchallenged, and the essays collected here offer further insight into this profound author’s ideas about women, society, religion, and national identity.
Table of Contents:
Publisher’s Note vii
Gravity and the Forbidden Apple 1
The Most Pious Men in the World 5
How Far from My Parents Have We Come? 9
A Sweet Murderous Woman 13
My Life’s Companion 17
My Cousin Naima’s Son 20
No Virtue Without Freedom 21
A Letter from a Woman Prisoner 23
The Girl Outside the Court 27
A Girl’s Death 31
Can We Not Even Wonder? 33
Not an Ideal Woman 37
Religion, Women and Cinema 41
Absolute Certainty and the Virus of Doubt 45
Taleq, Professor! 48
Hercules and Antaeus 52
Defamation of Religion and Al-Gama‘a in Ramadan 56
Reading Patriarchy in Egyptian History 60
Psychiatry and Atheism 64
Economics, Sex and Personal Status Law 68
How Costly is the Service of Religion? 71
Memories in the Mother Tongue 74
No Objectivity in a Violent World 78
Equality in Oppression 82
Political Islam 85
Between Two Seas 89
When Does the Fall Begin? 93
With Knowledge Comes Pleasure 97
The Price of Writing 101
An Old Friend 107
Nour’s Buried Memories 120
A Study of Philosophy and Change 128
About the Author :
Nawal El Saadawi was born in 1931. She is an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist, whose writings focus on the subject of women in Islam. She is well known for her exploration of female genital mutilation in Egyptian society and has been described as "the Simone de Beauvoir" of the Arab world. She is founder and president of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, and co-founder of the Arab Association for Human Rights. In addition to having been awarded honorary degrees on three continents, she has won the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe (2004), the Inana International Prize in Belgium (2005), and the International Peace Bureau's Sean MacBride Peace Prize (2012).
Review :
"Nawal El Saadawi writes with directness and passion."-- "New York Times"
"The leading spokeswoman on the status of women in the Arab World."-- "Guardian"
