Woman at Point Zero

Internationally acclaimed Egyptian feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi’s landmark novel Woman at Point Zero, published here with a new foreword.

Firdaus is on death row. Her crime, the murder of a man. Born into poverty in a rural Egyptian village, her childhood dreams and ambitions had been met with neglect and abuse by the world and the men who rule it. Driven to sex work to support herself, she is faced with the moral outrage of society and the bitter knowledge that for a woman, true freedom comes only when all hope is abandoned. In Woman at Point Zero, Firdaus tells her unforgettable story.

Woman at Point Zero is also available in audiobook format from audiobook retailers.

I think her life has been one long death threat. At a time when nobody else was talking, she spoke the unspeakable Margaret Atwood
Nawal El Saadawi writes with directness and passion, transforming the systematic brutalisation of peasants and of women into powerful allegory. The New York Times
This book will look you dead in the eye… I thoroughly recommend this book because it will make you examine the ways in which people in impossible situations can retain dignity and control over themselves. Read it wide-eyed Books By Broads
The most influential feminist thinker in the Arab world over the past half-century. Financial Times
El Saadawi has a flair for melodrama and mystery International Journal of Middle East Studies
A powerful indictment of the treatment of women in many parts of the Middle East, Labour Herald Woman at Point Zero should begin the long march towards a realistic and sympathetic portrayal of Arab women Middle East International
Scorching New Internationalist
Simple, but sharp and infuriating... Woman at Point Zero is the story of one Arab woman, but it reads as if it is every woman’s life Spare Rib
An unforgettable, unmissable book for the new global feminist The Times
This novella opened my eyes to the ideas of power structures Ailah Ahmed, Stylist
This extraordinary novel, written with such compassion, forces us to the edge, and deep inside what must be one of the worst tales of women’s oppression while somehow managing to inspire hope, if only through the courage of Nawal El Saadawi for being one of the first to tell this story to the world Jacqueline Rose
Leaves an indelible mark. This is a tale of injustice, inequality and sheer bad luck - written with such grace and skill as to be on a part with the finest literature of this or any era - haunting, poetic and fiercely relevant Scott Pack, The Friday Project

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.

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