Woman at Point Zero
Nawal El Saadawi
On death row, a woman tells the doctor why she killed a man.
El Saadawi, an Egyptian physician and feminist, based this short novel on a woman she met in Qanatir prison while researching neurosis in women. Firdaus narrates a life of abuse, genital cutting and prostitution that ends in a murder she refuses to regret, and a death sentence she meets as a kind of freedom. First published in Arabic in 1975, it became an important early text of Arab and African feminism.
Its legacy. El Saadawi was later imprisoned herself under Sadat and remained a contentious public figure until her death in 2021.
- Author
- Nawal El Saadawi
- First published
- 1975
- Genre
- Novel
- Theme
- Contemporary Voices, Memoir and Testimony
More from Contemporary Voices, Memoir and Testimony
- Americanah — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A Nigerian woman blogs about race in America, then goes home.
- One Day I Will Write About This Place — Binyavanga Wainaina
A Kenyan childhood recalled in the fractured rhythm of memory itself.
- A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier — Ishmael Beah
A boy conscripted at twelve recalls the war that took his childhood.
- We Need New Names — NoViolet Bulawayo
From a Zimbabwean shantytown called Paradise to a cold American city.