Hidden Face of Eve

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.

The most recognisable name in Egyptian and Middle Eastern feminism … poignant, penetrating yet simple.

• Foreword by Joumana Haddad Preface to the English Edition Introduction Part I The Mutilated Half1 The Question that No One Would Answer2 Sexual Aggression against the Female Child3 The Grandfather with Bad Manners4 The Injustice of Justice5 The Very Fine Membrane Called ‘Honour’6 Circumcision of Girls7 Obscurantism and Contradiction8 The Illegitimate Child and the Prostitute9 Abortion and Fertility10 Distorted Notions about Femininity, Beauty and LovePart II Women in History11 The Thirteenth Rib of Adam12 Man the God, Woman the Sinful13 Woman at the Time of the Pharaohs14 Liberty to the Slave, But Not for the Woman Part III The Arab Woman 15 The Role of Women in Arab History 16 Love and Sex in the Life of the Arab 17 The Heroine in Arab Literature Part IV Breaking Through 18 Arab Pioneers of Women’s Liberation 19 Work and Women 20 Marriage and Divorce An Afterword Notes