The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World
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Overview
Passionate, powerful and thought-provoking, in The Hidden Face of Eve, leading feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi provides a shocking account of the oppression of women in the Arab world.
Inspired by her experiences working as a doctor in rural Egypt and her life as an activist for women’s rights, she charts the injustices and violence faced by women in the society she grew up in, from legal inequality to honour killings and sexual violence, including female genital mutilation. Examining the historical roots of this oppression, she tackles the controversial topic of women and Islam, arguing that customs such as veiling and polygamy are contradictory to the fundamental teachings of the Muslim faith or any other.
As necessary now as when it was first published, The Hidden Face of Eve is a classic of Arab feminist writing.
A searing and personal account of brutality against women in the Muslim world
Includes a new foreword by Joumana Haddad
A personal and searing account of the challenges and injustices faced by women in Egypt and the Arab World, including controversial interpretations of Islamic war such as the veil, female circumcision and legal inequality
By renowned Egyptian feminist Nawal el Saadawi, author of Woman at Point Zero
Foreword by Joumana Haddad
Preface to the English Edition
Introduction
Part I The Mutilated Half
1 The Question that No One Would Answer
2 Sexual Aggression against the Female Child
3 The Grandfather with Bad Manners
4 The Injustice of Justice
5 The Very Fine Membrane Called ’Honour’
6 Circumcision of Girls
7 Obscurantism and Contradiction
8 The Illegitimate Child and the Prostitute
9 Abortion and Fertility
10 Distorted Notions about Femininity, Beauty and Love
Part II Women in History
11 The Thirteenth Rib of Adam
12 Man the God, Woman the Sinful
13 Woman at the Time of the Pharaohs
14 Liberty to the Slave, But Not for the Woman
Part III The Arab Woman
15 The Role of Women in Arab History
16 Love and Sex in the Life of the Arab
17 The Heroine in Arab Literature
Part IV Breaking Through
18 Arab Pioneers of Women’s Liberation
19 Work and Women
20 Marriage and Divorce
An Afterword
Notes
The most recognisable name in Egyptian and Middle Eastern feminism … poignant, penetrating yet simple.
A harrowing exposé of the abuse of women in the Arab world
Nawal El Saadawi has become something of a heroine for many young Arab women … a cry from the heart
The leading spokeswoman on the status of women in the Arab world
Nawal El Saadawi speaks directly on behalf of many women in the Third World and the daily struggles they face
The Arab world’s leading feminist and iconoclast
- Title: The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World
- Author: Nawal El Saadawi
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 456
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780755651542, 9780755651528, 0755651529, 0755651545
- Resource ID: LLS:9780755651542
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T11:03:24Z
Nawal El Saadawi was born in a village outside Cairo, Egypt, in 1931. A trained medical doctor, she wrote landmark works on the oppression of Arab women including Woman at Point Zero (1973), God Dies by the Nile (1976) and The Hidden Face of Eve (1977). After being imprisoned by Anwar Sadat's government for criticising the regime, she founded the Arab Women's Solidarity Association in 1982, before being forced into exile in later life due to death threats by religious extremists. She returned to Egypt in 1996, running for president in 2005 until government persecution forced her to withdraw. Saadawi died in Egypt in 2021.