Men, Women, and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

El Saadawi is the Arab world's best-known feminist writer, a novelist and playwright of great range and power known in the West primarily for a 1980 article in Ms. magazine in which she revealed her own childhood genital excision. Until this title appeared, the only English-language book available about her was a translation of Georges Tarabishi's unfavorable critique, Woman Against Her Sex (Saqi, 1988). Here, Malti-Douglas (comparative literature and women's studies, Indiana Univ.) offers a penetrating and admiring analysis of El Saadawi's writing, exploring the influence of the author's background as a physician, her use of Middle Eastern myth, her recasting of ancient texts, her role in Muslim cultural and religious debates, and her creative use of language. A well-organized, readable, and informative introduction not only to El Saadwi's work but to Arabic feminist issues, this is essential for all academic literature and women's studies collections.?Beverly Miller, Boise State Univ. Lib., Id.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

Men, Women, and God(s) is a pioneering study of the Arab world's leading feminist and most controversial woman writer, Nawal El Saadawi. Author of plays, memoirs, and such novels as Woman at Point Zero and The Innocence of the Devil, El Saadawi has become well known in the West as well as in the Arab community for her unforgettable female heroes and explosive narratives, which boldly address sexual violence, female circumcision, theology, and other politically charged themes. Her outspoken feminism and critique of patriarchy have also earned her the wrath of repressive forces in the Middle East. Imprisoned in her native Egypt under Sadat, El Saadawi is now among those on the death lists of Islamic religious conservatives.
In Men, Women, and God(s) Fedwa Malti-Douglas makes the work of this important but little-understood writer truly accessible. Contending that El Saadawi's texts cannot be read in isolation from their Islamic and Arabic heritage, Malti-Douglas draws upon a deep knowledge of classical and modern Arabic textual traditions--and on extensive conversations with Nawal El Saadawi--to place the writer within her cultural and historical context. With this impassioned and radical exegesis of El Saadawi's prolific output, Malti-Douglas has written a crucial study of one of the most controversial and influential writers of our time.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 277 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; First Ed. 1st Printing edition (November 9, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520200721
• ISBN-13: 978-0520200722
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,156,380 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Men, Women, and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist, July 26, 2001

By	Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

Saadawi (b. 1931) is an Egyptian woman, a medical doctor, a prolific writer, and the Arabic-speaking worlds most outspoken and radical feminist. Without exaggerating, Malti-Douglas writes that No Arab woman inspires as much emotion as Nawal El Saadawi. No woman in the Middle East has been the subject of more polemic. Certainly, no Arab womans pen has violated as many sacred enclosures. Malti-Douglas then devotes over two hundred pages to analyzing Saadawis overheated rhetoric and bad novels, calling on all the usual feminist tropes (title and subtitle give their flavor, as do such chapter headings as Paradigms of Violation and Rewriting Patriarchy).

This predictable feminist lionizing of one of its own holds little interest to the general reader, but Malti-Douglas does raise an intriguing issue when she reports on the clash between Saadawi and her equally leftist intellectual (male) opponents in the Middle East. They would have her stay quiet about the appalling female condition in their countries and try to delegitimize her writings as Orientalist feminism. To which Malti-Douglas replies that Anti-imperialism can easily become a trap through which nationalism, while seeking to defend the native against the outsider, really defends those in power in the native society. Saadawis feminism, in other words, proves a source of unusual sympathy for the West. The importance of these epithets? Another sign of the intellectual lefts weakness: caught up in a web of its own inconsistencies, it (unlike the fundamentalist right) cannot even figure out its outlook on the West.