
Nawal El Saadawi (Arabic: نوال السعداوي) was born in 1931, in a small village outside Cairo. Unusually, she and her brothers and sisters were educated together, and she graduated from the University of Cairo Medical School in 1955, specializing in psychiatry. For two years, she practiced as a medical doctor, both at the university and in her native Tahla. From 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked as Director General for Public Health Education for the Egyptian government. During this time, she also studied at Columbia University in New York, where she received her Master of Public Health degree in 1966. Her first novel Memoirs of a Woman Doctor was published in Cairo in 1958. In 1972, however, she lost her job in the Egyptian government as a result of political pressure. The magazine, Health, which she had founded and edited for more than three years, was closed down. From 1973 to 1978 Saadawi worked at the High Institute of Literature and Science. It was at this time that she began to write, in works of fiction and non-fiction, the books on the oppression of Arab women for which she has become famous. Her most famous novel, Woman at Point Zero was published in Beirut in 1973. It was followed in 1976 by God Dies by the Nile and in 1977 by The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World. In 1981 Nawal El Saadawi publicly criticized the one-party rule of President Anwar Sadat, and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. She was released one month after his assassination. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, which was outlawed in 1991. When, in 1988, her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list, she and her second husband, Sherif Hetata, fled to the USA, where she taught at Duke University and Washington State University. She returned to Egypt in 1996. In 2004 she presented herself as a candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, with a platform of human rights, democracy and greater freedom for women. In July 2005, however, she was forced to withdraw her candidacy in the face of ongoing government persecution. Nawal El Saadawi has achieved widespread international recognition for her work. She holds honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso. Her many prizes and awards include the Great Minds of the Twentieth Century Prize, awarded by the American Biographical Institute in 2003, the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe and the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2004. Her books have been translated into over 28 languages worldwide. They are taught in universities across the world. She now works as a writer, psychiatrist and activist. Her most recent novel, entitled Al Riwaya was published in Cairo in 2004.
Series
Books

My Diaries in Women's Prison
1982
المرأة والدين والأخلاق
2000

The Nawal El Saadawi Reader
1997

Love in the Time of Oil
1993

The well of life
1993

المرأة والصراع النفسي
1976

Walking through Fire
The Later Years of Nawal El Saadawi, In Her Own Words
2002

المرأة والجنس
1968

God Dies by the Nile
1974

The Fall of the Imam
1987

Woman at Point Zero
1975

The Innocence of the Devil
1992

Two Women in One
1971

A Daughter of Isis
The Autobiography of Nawal El Saadawi
1986

Off Limits
New Writings on Fear and Sin
2018

الأنثى هي الأصل
1977

مفكرة طفلة في الخامسة والثمانين
2017

The Circling Song
1976

The Dramatic Literature of Nawal El Saadawi
God Resigns and Isis
1987

عن المرأة
1977

Zeina
2008

The Hidden Face of Eve
Women in the Arab World
1977

The Novel
2004

Gods and Soldiers
The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing
2009

Diary of a Child Called Souad
2015

Memoirs of a Female Doctor
1958

God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels
God Dies by the Nile, Searching, The Circling Song
2015

The Essential Nawal El Saadawi
A Reader
2009

New Daughters of Africa
2019

In Camera
1978

Searching
1991