The Open Door is a landmark of women’s writing in Arabic. Published in 1960, it was very bold for its time in exploring a middle-class Egyptian girl’s coming of sexual and political age, in the context of the Egyptian nationalist movement preceding the 1952 revolution. The novel traces the pressures on young women and young men of that time and class as they seek to free themselves of family control and social expectations. Young Layla and her brother become involved in the student activism of the 1940s and early 1950s and in the popular resistance to continued imperialist rule; the story culminates in the 1956 Suez Crisis, when Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s nationalization of the Canal led to a British, French, and Israeli invasion. Not only daring in her themes, Latifa al-Zayyat was also bold in her use of colloquial Arabic, and the novel contains some of the liveliest dialogue in modern Arabic literature. "Not only a great novel, but a literary landmark that shaped our consciousness." ― Abdel Moneim Tallima "A great anticolonialist work in a feminist key." ― Ferial Ghazoul "Latifa al-Zayyat greatly helped all of us Egyptian writers in our early writing careers." ― Naguib Mahfouz
Author
Latifa Zayyat (Arabic: لطيفة الزيات; variant English spelling: Latifa al-Zayyat) was an Egyptian feminist writer and academic. As a student attending Cairo University in the 1940s, where she was part of left-wing and feminist movements on campus. She was later imprisoned for her political view (during the presidency of Anwar Sadat Zayyat was Professor of English at Ain Shams University. She publishing critical studies on American and English writers, as well as short stories in her native Arabic. Her novel al-Bab al-Maftuh (The Open Door, translated into English by Marilyn Booth in 2000) is a classic of Middle Eastern feminism, whose female protagonist is - like the author - a radical fighting colonialism and middle class values as well as stifling patriarchy. Her autobiography, "Hamlat Tafteesh: Awraq Shakhseyyah" (Search Operation: Personal Papers, 1992) is also available in English, and in several other languages.
