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Nawal El Saadawi was born in a village outside Cairo, Egypt, in 1931. A trained medical doctor, she wrote landmark works on the oppression of Arab women including Woman at Point Zero (1973), God Dies by the Nile (1976) and The Hidden Face of Eve (1977). After being imprisoned by Anwar Sadat’s government for criticising the regime, she founded the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association in 1982, before being forced into exile in later life due to death threats by religious extremists. She returned to Egypt in 1996, running for president in 2005 until government persecution forced her to withdraw. Saadawi died in Egypt in 2021.
Nawal El Saadawi is a legend in her own time. This is an ambitious work indeed * Praise for The Circling Song, American Book Review * This novel is a powerful example of the kind of anger and desperation to which Arab women writers are beginning to give vent * Praise for The Circling Song, Choice * Nawal El Saadawi’s technique is impressive: at once precise, controlled and hypnotic, even in translation. The style and meaning of the book are one. A song with no beginning and no end, the author tells its universal story * Praise for The Circling Song, Everywoman * The most influential feminist thinker in the Arab world over the past half-century * Financial Times * Nawal El Saadawi writes with directness and passion * New York Times * Powerfully political * Praise for God Dies by the Nile, Poetry Nation Review * One of Saadawi’s most powerful books that we have had the privilege to read in English. Unusual, original and unexpected, it’s one of those very rare books which address you in many languages and can take you in many different directions at once * Praise for The Circling Song, Spare Rib * The leading spokeswoman on the status of women in the Arab world * The Guardian * To read this book is like looking into a kaleidoscope; as each new element in the story is added, so a new configuration is formed * Praise for The Circling Song, The Independent * Nawal El Saadawi’s achievement is to lay bare the thin flesh and huge passions of her characters * Praise for God Dies by the Nile, West Indian Digest * A quietly formidable achievement; its understated evocation of tragedy and strength in the face of victimization make it a graceful classic * Praise for God Dies by the Nile, Women's Review * Searching is an intense exploration of the state of mind of a young Egyptian woman who longs for both professional and personal meaning in her life, but finds herself isolated and adrift in a Kafkaesque world of senseless work. Saadawi creates a hellish vision of Cairo. Her protagonist finds herself utterly alone in a world dominated by casual, brutal patriarchy and a shadowy authoritarian state. This is a disturbing text that makes the reader feel trapped in a world that often feels like a particularly bad recurrent dream * Praise for Searching, Jane Plastow, professor of African theatre, Leeds University * Nawal El Saadawi once again presents a psychological drama that will take you into the depths of a woman’s despair. Intimate details and vivid descriptions fill this story of an ordinary person who ends up teetering over the abyss of insanity… This is a novel of Cairo with the languid Nile winding its way through a story of love, guilt, betrayal and redemption * Praise for Searching, Miriam Cooke, professor of modern Arabic literature, Duke University *
