When she did mention the subject, it was only to note that men had always interpreted religion in their own interest, or that religion should not be permitted to interfere with the sciences.įor her first work to appear in English, however, Saadawi has written an introduction for the English-speaking public. In her Arabic writings, Saadawi tried as far as possible to avoid any confrontation with Islam and religion. Not a few Arab women, and men too, were moved by her accounts and analyses of virginity, frigidity and clitorectomy, of machismo and the pressures it brings to bear on men. Saadawi portrayed the misery of Arab women frankly and without frills. In such works as Al-Mar’a wal-Jins, Al-Untha hiya al-Asl, and Al-Mar’a wal-Sira’ al-Nafsi, she courageously broached taboo problems she had come to know intimately through her experience as a physician and psychiatrist practising in the Egyptian countryside and cities.
The books of Nawal Saadawi, which began to appear in Beirut in 1974, were a revelation to many Arab intellectuals, women and men, who were unacquainted with post-1968 feminist literature. Nawal Saadawi, The Hidden Face of Eve Women in the Arab World, Zed Press, London, 1980.
0 kommentar(er)
