Table of Contents

• Preface - The Gift
• 1. Allah and McDonalds
• 2. The Cry in the Night
• 3. God Above, Husband Below
• 4. We Thank God for our Calamities
• 5. Flying with the Butterflies
• 6. Killing the Bridegroom
• 7. Daughter of the Sea
• 8. My Revolutionary Father
• 9. The Lost Servant-Girl
• 10. The Village of Forgotten Employees
• 11. God Hid Behind the Coat-Stand
• 12. The Ministry of Nauseation
• 13. Dreaming of Pianos
• 14. To the Circus
• 15. The Singing Man
• 16. The Whiskered Peasant
• 17. Uncles, Suitors and other Bloodsuckers
• 18. A Stove for my Mother
• 19. Coming to Cairo
• 20. The Long, Strong Bones of a Horse
• 21. Love and the Hideous Cat
• 22. Art Thieves
• 23. Mad Aunts and Abandoned Babies
• 24. The House of Desolation
• 25. The Secret Communist
• 26. Wasted Lives
• 27. Cholera, Ageing and Death
• 28. The Qur'an Betrayed
• 29. British English and Holy Arabic
• 30. The Name of Marx
• 31. The Brush of History
• Afterword - Living in Resistance

About the Author

Nawal El Saadawi is an internationally renowned writer, novelist and fighter for women's rights both within Egypt and abroad. She holds honorary doctorates from, among others, the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso as well as Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Her many prizes and awards include the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2003, the Council of Europe North-South Prize in 2004, the Women of the Year Award (UK) in 2011, the Sean MacBride Peace Prize (Ireland) in 2012, and the French National Order of Merit in 2013. Her books have been translated into over forty languages worldwide. They are taught in universities across the world.

Reviews

'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, BBC Imagine

'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

'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