by Nawal El Saadawi

Nawal El Saadawi (also spelled Nawal Sa’- dawi) was born in the Egyptian village of Kafr Tahla in the Nile Delta province of Qalubiyya in 1931. Her high scores on national examinations permitted her to enter the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University during a time when the student population was still heavily male. She practiced both general medicine and psychiatry, became Director of Health Education for Egypt, edited the popular magazine Health, and, having written short stories as a university student, continued to produce fiction. In the 1970s El Saadawi’s writing shifted entirely to gender issues. She became known as Egypt’s most outspoken critic of the oppression of women and the first to write openly about such aspects of female sexuality as clitoridectomy, incest, and prostitution. Her career shifted from state-funded medical work into full-time...