THE LITERARY SCALPEL OF A FEMINIST
THE LITERARY SCALPEL OF A FEMINIST

Summary/Abstract: Defying the preconceived ideas of the Islamic world, physician, writer and psychiatrist Nawal El-Saadawi (1931-) was born in a small village in Egypt. Ever since she was young, she has clung to writing as the only way to survive mentally. Thus, in 1944, the author signed her first novel Memoirs of a female child called Su'âd as the demons of writing inhabited her even as a child. In 1955 Nawal completed her medical studies at the University of Cairo. In spite of education quite open to the values of the West, Nawal suffered much in his childhood because of the inequities of a traditional society. Her first marriage to a medical colleague lasted only two years. The period when practicing medicine in their native lands - Kafr Tahla village - comes in contact with the daily suffering of women who had to suffer domestic violence and a tortured life especially in the rural area where lack of access to education was obvious. Her career begins to emerge when she was appointed director within the Ministry of Health. This is where she meets the next husband - Sherif Hatata - physician, writer and communist and translator of some of her novels. Her first book is a collection of novels, I Learned Love (1957). In the following years the author signed other short stories and novels A Moment of Truth (1959), Little Tenderness (1960), The Thread and the Wall (1972), Ain El Hayat (1973), She was the Weaker (1977), Death of an Ex-minister (1978), Adab Am Kellet Abad (2000).

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