Nawal El Saadawi

Walking through Fire (eBook, ePUB)

The Later Years of Nawal El Saadawi, In Her Own Words
Übersetzer: Hetata, Sherif

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

'Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives. They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.'

Nawal El Saadawi is one of the greatest writers to come out of the Arab world. Born in a small Egyptian village in 1931, her life and writings have shown an extraordinary strength of character and a unique ability to create new worlds in the fight against oppression. Saadawi has been pilloried, censored, imprisoned and exiled for her refusal to accept the oppression imposed on women by gender and class. Still, she continues to write.

In A Daughter of Isis, Nawal El Saadawi painted a beautifully textured portrait of the childhood that moulded her into a novelist and fearless campaigner for freedom and the rights of women. Walking through Fire takes up the story of her extraordinary life. 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 learn about her activism for female empowerment and the authorities that try to obstruct her. We travel with her into exile after her name is put on a fundamentalist death list. We witness her three marriages, each offering in their way love, companionship and shared struggle. And we gain an unprecedented insight into this most wonderful of creative minds.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK
• Seitenzahl: 304
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. Mai 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781786993120
• Artikelnr.: 52381604

Autorenporträt

Nawal El Saadawi was an internationally renowned writer, novelist and fighter for women's rights both within Egypt and abroad.

Born in 1931, in a village outside Cairo, she wrote her first novel, Diary of a Child Called Souad, at the age of thirteen. Unusually, she and her brothers and sisters were educated together. After graduating from the University of Cairo Medical School in 1955, specializing in psychiatry, she practised as a medical doctor for two years.

From 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked for the Egyptian government as Director General for Public Health Education. During this time, she studied at Columbia University in New York, where she received her Master's degree in Public Health in 1966. In 1972, however, she lost her job in the government as a result of political pressure. The magazine Health, which she founded and had 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 renowned 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 her study of Arab women, The Hidden Face of Eve.

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 Sadat's assassination. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, which was outlawed in 1991. For some years during the Mubarak regime, Saadawi lived in exile, teaching in universities in the USA and Europe, including Duke University and Washington State University. Saadawi 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 achieved widespread international recognition for her work. She held honorary doctorates from, among others, the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso as well as Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her many prizes and awards include the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2003, the Council of Europe North-South Prize in 2004, the Women of the Year Award (UK) in 2011, the Sean MacBride Peace Prize (Ireland) in 2012, and the French National Order of Merit in 2013. Her books have been translated into over forty languages worldwide. They are taught in universities across the world.

Inhaltsangabe

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
Index

Rezensionen

'Stormy and vivid, characterized by great intellectual and emotional restlessness ... It seems certain that without powerful self-belief and faith in her own instincts, she would not have survived.'
Times Literary Supplement

'I think her life has been one long death threat. At a time when nobody else was talking, she spoke the unspeakable.'
Margaret Atwood, BBC Imagine

'This is what great art does. It closes the great chasms between us. With words, Saadawi peels away the artifice to reveal the beating heart beneath the surface. We come away from this book as we do from all her others, amazed at her cool courage, profound insight, and deep passion. Without her brave work an entire country would not be fully known.'
Rebecca Walker

'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

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