About the Book

In A Daughter of Isis, Nawal El Saadawi painted a beautifully textured portrait of the childhood that moulded her into a novelist and fighter for freedom and the rights of women. Walking Through Fire takes up the story of Saadawi‘s extraordinary life.

Famous for her novels, short stories and writings on women, Saadawi is known as the first Arab woman to write about sex and its relation to economics and politics. Imprisoned under Sadat for her opinions, she has continued to fight against all forms of discrimination based on class, gender, nation, race or religion.

This autobiography tells the story of a life spent in resistance and shows the passion for justice that has shaped her life and her writing. We read about her as a rural doctor, trying to help a young girl escape from a terrible fate imposed on her by a brutal male tyranny. We follow her attempts to set up women‘s organizations and to publish magazines later banned by the authorities or endangered by fundamentalist threats. We travel with her into exile after her name was published on a death list. We witness her first marriage to a freedom fighter hounded into drug addiction by a system which has no mercy. We share her struggle against her ‘false self‘ and a second husband who offers her financial security and comfort provided she stops writing. We live with the beautiful moments of her third marriage with a man released after fourteen years of imprisonment and hard labour, and the love, companionship, shared struggle and the differences between them.

Nawal El Saadawi has carved a place for herself in the universal struggle against oppression. ‘Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives‘, she says. ‘They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.‘

2007 recipient of The African Literature Association’s Fonlon-Nichols Award, which is given annually to an African writer for excellence in creative writing and for contributions to the struggles for human rights and freedom of expression

Commendations

'Her honesty, strength, courage, and accomplishments are admirable and inspiring.' - Library Journal

'A moving repudiation of those who have made Egypt's history in the last century.' - Washington Post Book World

'El Saadawi's poetic prose and searing details keep the pages alive with stories of triumph, dissent, death and disappointment.' - San Francisco Chronicle

'This is what great art does. It closes the great chasms between us. This is what Nawaal El Saadawi does in her writing about her homeland and her life. With words, she peels away the artifice to reveal the beating heart beneath the surface ... Saadawi's truth will makes its way from body to body, heart to heart, to sew the ripped and jagged edges of the world ... We come away from this book as we do from all her others, amazed at her cool courage, profound psychological insight, and deep passion ... Without her brave work an entire country would not be fully known ... Dr. Saadawi has saved us from awful ignorance.' - Rebecca Walker

Contents

1. The Threat
2. Spreading My Wings
3. The Village Doctor
4. The Tripartite Invasion
5. What is Suppressed Always Comes Back
6. Love and Despair
7. My mother has no place in Paradise
8. Moments That Belong Nowhere
9. The Death Threat
10. Beyond Consciousness
11. The Photograph
12. The Scalpel and the Law
13. The Defeat
14. Searching For Love
15. An Aborted Revolution
16. The Dream Of Flying

About the Author

Nawal El Saadawi is a renowned Egyptian writer, novelist and activist. She has published over 40 books, which have been translated into over 30 languages.

Nawal El Saadawi graduated from the University of Cairo Medical College in 1955, specializing in psychiatry, and practiced as a medical doctor until taking the position of Director General for Public Health Education in the Ministry of Health. In 1972 she lost her job in the Egyptian government because of her banned book: Woman and Sex. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association (AWSA), the Egyptian Branch of which was outlawed in Egypt in 1991.