The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World [Paperback]

Nawal El Saadawi (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0905762517 | ISBN-13: 978-0905762517 | Publication Date: May 15, 1980

This powerful account of the oppression of women in the Muslim world remains as shocking today as when it was first published, more than a quarter of a century ago.

Nawal El Saadawi writes out of a powerful sense of the violence and injustice which permeated her society. Her experiences working as a doctor in villages around Egypt, witnessing prostitution, honour killings and sexual abuse, including female circumcision, drove her to give voice to this suffering. She goes on explore the causes of the situation through a discussion of the historical role of Arab women in religion and literature. Saadawi argues that the veil, polygamy and legal inequality are incompatible with the essence of Islam or any human faith.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Arabic (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Egyptian novelist, doctor and militant writer on Arab women's problems and their struggle for liberation, Nawal el Saadawi was born in the village of Kafr Tahla. Refusing to accept the limitations imposed by both religious and colonial oppression on most women of rural origin, she qualified as a doctor in 1955 and rose to become Egypt's Director of Public Health. Since she began to write over 30 years ago, her books have concentrated on women. In 1972, her first work of non fiction, Women and Sex, evoked the antagonism of highly placed political and theological authorities, and the Ministry of Health was pressurised into dismissing her. Under similar pressures she lost her post as Chief Editor of a health journal and as Assistant General Secretary in the Medical Association in Egypt. From 1973 to 1976 she worked on researching women and neurosis in the Ain Shams University's Faculty of Medicine; and from 1979 to 1980 she was the United Nations Advisor for the Women's Programme in Africa (ECA) and Middle East (ECWA). Later in 1980, as a culmination of the long war she had fought for Egyptian women's social and intellectual freedom, an activity that had closed all avenues of official jobs to her, she was imprisoned under the Sadat regime. She has since founded the Arab Women's Solidarity Association and devoted her time to being a writer, journalist and worldwide speaker on women's issues. With the publication by Zed Books in 1980 of The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, English language readers were first introduced to the work of this major writer. Zed Books has also published four of her previous novels, Woman at Point Zero (1983), God Dies by the Nile (1985), The Circling Song (1989) and Searching (1991) as well as a collection of her non-fiction writings The Nawal El Saadawi Reader (1997). She has received three literary awards.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Zed Books (May 15, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0905762517
• ISBN-13: 978-0905762517
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #925,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Egyptian Feminism Exists, August 17, 2005

By 

Ang "Ang" (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World (Hardcover)

Nawal Al-Sa'Dawi's book The Hidden Face of Eve is absolutely essential to any global study of feminism. While it's true that the book was written in the 70s, it's important to note that many of the subjects Sa'Dawi examines are timeless - especially with regard to patriarchy - which in many of its manifestations - remains unchanged to this day and is not emblematic of any single nation, or of any single religious dogma.

Sa'Dawi opens by recounting the night she and her sister were subjected to circumcision. Her child's mind remembers the sound of rasping butcher knives, and the account is both heart wrenching, and yet somehow, removed. Sa'Dawi emphasizes that female circumcision, or FGM, is NOT Islamic - despite what many Egyptians mistakenly believe - and openly condemns the procedure in all its various extremes.

One cannot help but feel enormous respect for Sa'Dawi for her work as a doctor in poverty stricken villages, for her outspoken and vigilant opposition to inequity, - even within her own family - and for her graceful scholarly look at the history of the oppression of women. Indeed, Sa'Dawi's political activities led to her imprisonment under Sadat, but she continues to work for the cause of social justice even under the current political milieu which has, yet again, sought to silence her. Nawal Al-Sa'Dawi considered running for president, but withdrew her candidacy because she was repeatedly kept from legitimately campaigning. It's a shame that Mubarak is unwilling to have an open election. Could he be afraid of losing to a woman?

Initially I was drawn to Nawal Al-Sa'Dawi because the idea of Egyptian feminism, or Islamic feminism seemed wholly unexplored by western scholars. Her examination of the veil, or hijab, and its origins is put into both historical and Islamic context. Truly over the years the veil has come to mean many different things to different people. In a world where the word `terrorism' and `islam' have become almost synonymous it's more important than ever to understand the mentality of post-colonialism. Today, Arab youth are daily striving for an identity which is independent of western influence - enter Islamism, enter the veil, enter the extremism we see reported daily in the news.

An absolute MUST-READ for anyone seeking to understand patriarchy, post-colonialism, Islamic culture, and what motivates the current trend in Islamic countries toward extremism...

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Many short essays on female genital mutilation, December 10, 2006

By 

Gagewyn (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World (Paperback)

The Hidden Face of Eve is a collection of short essays on female suppression in Egypt including female circumcision and the imporance of the hymen in society. Saadawi is a female doctor in that region. She begins by describing her own circumcision which was forced and traumatic and done when she was a very young girl. She goes on to describe many cruel things that she saw as a doctor including botched circumcisions and mutilations done to brides to get a good bleed on the wedding day and prove that the woman had a hymen. Each chapter is kind of a mini-essay on some topic off of these themes. The chapters feel as if they are meant to stand alone. There is a lot of overlap from one chapter to the next, and the book feels more like parts than a whole.

If the subject matter is what you are looking for then you will get a lot of it here. Much of what Saadawi is saying is anecdotal and based on what she saw or had heard of as a doctor rather than gathered statistical data. This makes sense in that this isn't the type of information that lends itself to surveys. Much of it deals with really private and painful experiences. It might be good to temper this with a more mathemathical approach so that this would bring the feeling for the people involved but there would be big picture objectivity from elsewhere.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some parts still sadly relevant, October 16, 2009

By 

GT Reviewer (Georgetown, Guyana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World (Paperback)

Interesting look at Egyptian women's lives. It sounded like the 1950's or 60's but I was surprised to see the book was published in 1980. I hope things have improved since then but I think her observation that women will continue to be subjugated by men as long as they do not have any valid means of supporting themselves is fairly true. It was a bit of a surprise to read her theory linking the evils of Capitalism and women's issues- freeing women from unpaid labour in the house to being used as a cheap sources of Labour.