A Daughter of Isis

Nawal El Saadawi was born in a village outside Cairo, Egypt, in 1931. A trained medical doctor, she wrote landmark works on the oppression of Arab women including Woman at Point Zero (1973), God Dies by the Nile (1976) and The Hidden Face of Eve (1977). After being imprisoned by Anwar Sadat’s government for criticising the regime, she founded the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association in 1982, before being forced into exile in later life due to death threats by religious extremists. She returned to Egypt in 1996, running for president in 2005 until government persecution forced her to withdraw. Saadawi died in Egypt in 2021.

Foreword
Preface - The Gift
1. Allah and McDonalds
2. The Cry in the Night
3. God Above, Husband Below
4. We Thank God for our Calamities
5. Flying with the Butterflies
6. Killing the Bridegroom
7. Daughter of the Sea
8. My Revolutionary Father
9. The Lost Servant-Girl
10. The Village of Forgotten Employees
11. God Hid Behind the Coat-Stand
12. The Ministry of Nauseation
13. Dreaming of Pianos
14. To the Circus
15. The Singing Man
16. The Whiskered Peasant
17. Uncles, Suitors and other Bloodsuckers
18. A Stove for my Mother
19. Coming to Cairo
20. The Long, Strong Bones of a Horse
21. Love and the Hideous Cat
22. Art Thieves
23. Mad Aunts and Abandoned Babies
24. The House of Desolation
25. The Secret Communist
26. Wasted Lives
27. Cholera, Ageing and Death
28. The Qur'an Betrayed
29. British English and Holy Arabic
30. The Name of Marx
31. The Brush of History
Afterword - Living in Resistance