The Hidden Face of Eve Women in the Arab World, Second Edition

by El Saadawi, Nawal

• ISBN13: 9781842778753
• ISBN10: 1842778757
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-07-15
• Publisher: Zed Books

Summary

This powerful account of brutality against women in the Muslim world remains as shocking today as when it was first published, more than a quarter of a century ago. It was the horrific female genital mutilation that she suffered aged only six, which first awakened Nawal el Saadawi's sense of the violence and injustice which permeated her society. Her experiences working as a doctor in villages around Egypt, witnessing prostitution, honour killings and sexual abuse, inspired her to write in order to give voice to this suffering. She goes on explore the causes of the situation through a discussion of the historical role of Arab women in religion and literature.Saadawi argues that the veil, polygamy and legal inequality are incompatible with the just and peaceful Islam which she envisages.

Author Biography

Nawal El Saadawi was born in 1931, in a small village outside Cairo. Unusually, she and her brothers and sisters were educated together, and she graduated from the University of Cairo Medical School in 1955, specializing in psychiatry. For two years, she practiced as a medical doctor, both at the university and in her native Tahla. From 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked as Director General for Public Health Education for the Egyptian government. During this time, she also studied at Columbia University in New York, where she received her Master of Public Health degree in 1966. Her first novel Memoirs of a Woman Doctor was published in Cairo in 1958. In 1972, however, she lost her job in the Egyptian government as a result of political pressure. The magazine, Health, which she had founded and edited for more than three years, was closed down. From 1973 to 1978 Saadawi worked at the High Institute of Literature and Science. It was at this time that she began to write, in works of fiction and non-fiction, the books on the oppression of Arab women for which she has become famous. 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: Women in the Arab World. In 1981 Nawal El Saadawi publicly criticized the one-party rule of President Anwar Sadat, and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. She was released one month after his assassination. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, which was outlawed in 1991. When, in 1988, her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list, she and her second husband, Sherif Hetata, fled to the USA, where she taught at Duke University and Washington State University. She returned to Egypt in 1996.
In 2004 she presented herself as a candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, with a platform of human rights, democracy and greater freedom for women. In July 2005, however, she was forced to withdraw her candidacy in the face of ongoing government persecution. Nawal El Saadawi has achieved widespread international recognition for her work. She holds honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso. Her many prizes and awards include the Great Minds of the Twentieth Century Prize, awarded by the American Biographical Institute in 2003, the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe and the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2004. Her books have been translated into over 28 languages worldwide. They are taught in universities across the world.  She now works as a writer, psychiatrist and activist. Her most recent novel, entitled Al Riwaya was published in Cairo in 2004.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Preface to the English Edition	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
The Mutilated Half
The Question that No One Would Answer	p. 13
Sexual Aggression against the Eemale Child	p. 20
The Grandfather with Bad Manners	p. 25
The Injustice of Justice	p. 29
The Very Fine Membrane Called 'Honour'	p. 38
Circumcision of Girls	p. 50
Obscurantism and Contradiction	p. 66
The Illegitimate Child and the Prostitute	p. 76
Abortion and Fertility	p. 94
Distorted Notions about Femininity, Beauty and Love	p. 109
Women in History
The Thirteenth Rib of Adam	p. 137
Man the God, Woman the Sinful	p. 153
Woman at the Time of the Pharaohs	p. 161
Liberty to the Slave, But Not for the Woman	p. 171
The Arab Woman
The Role of Women in Arab History	p. 187
Love and Sex in the Life of the Arab	p. 198
The Heroine in Arab Literature	p. 229
Breaking Through
Arab Pioneers of Women's Liberation	p. 251
Work and Women	p. 274
Marriage and Divorce	p. 288
An Afterword	p. 312
Notes	p. 315
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