SOURCE: Salti, Ramzi M. Review of Ganat wa iblis (The Innocence of the Devil), by Nawal El Saadawi. World Literature Today 67, no. 2 (spring 1993): 437-38.

In the following review, Salti examines the ways El Saadawi reconfigures oppressive religious ideologies in The Innocence of the Devil.

Nawal El Saadawi's latest novel, Jannât wa-Iblîs [The Innocence of the Devil], differs from her previous works in that it emphasizes a subject matter that had thus far been circumvented in her novels. For the first time in her thirty-four years of literary production, the author of such relatively “secular” works as Al-ghâ'ib (1976; Eng. Searching, 1991; see WLT 66:2, p. 396), Ugniyat al-atfâl al-dâ'iriyyah (1977; Eng. The Circling Song, 1989; see WLT 64:1, p. 187) and Imra'ah 'inda nuqtat al-sifr (1975; Eng. A Woman at Point Zero, 1983; see WLT 59:3, p. 483) has written a novel in which religion is foregrounded and questioned in a way that may prove...