Thanks to her novels, interviews, and effective television appearances, she is extremely well known and believes that the oppression of women is universal and not only present in the Arab world.

Nawal also problematizes Christian worldviews, in which “family values,” the cult of virginity, and “honour killings” are aspects of a patriarchal culture and tradition. After graduating from medical school in Cairo in 1955, al-Saadawi held a position in the Health Ministry but was dismissed because of her political activities. She was imprisoned in 1981, because she opposed Sadat, and she also became the target of Islamic extremists. She spent a few years teaching in American universities and then returned to Egypt while she continued to write.

Her books include Searching (1957) and Memoirs of a Woman Doctor (1958). Most of her work has been translated into many languages, including English with, among many others, Woman at Point Zero (1983) Two Women in One (1985), God Dies by the Nile (1985), The Fall of the Imam (1988), The Innocence of the Devil (1994) and A Daughter of Isis. Her latest book, Love in the Kingdom of Oil, (published in Italian by Editrice il Sirente, 2009), is the story of a “woman who lives in an authoritarian regime where everything that leads women to have interests outside the home is considered the symptom of a psychological disease. It is a world in which the leading lights of the world can only be men, and thus it is known although not said that there have been historical falsifications concerning the transformation of goddesses into gods, such as when Abu al Haul used force to take the throne ordering that the breasts be removed from the statue of a woman and that a beard be added.”

Translated by Francesca Simmons