A Daughter of Isis: The Early Life of Nawal El Saadawi, in Her Own Words

"In this book we see how, from an early age, Saadawi combines her love of the Arabic language with her awareness of gender-based oppression to create texts which are as subversive as they are moving" --Modern African Studies

"As I finished reading Dr. Nawal's autobiography I felt a sudden sense of loss. I didn't want to leave her. I went back and read the last sections again, and then again, until I remembered how many other books she has written. Then I felt delight that I will be able to return to her words and to her stories, and that so many others will share in them" -- Bettina Aptheker

"This is a book we should all be reading" -- Doris Lessing

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

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.