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A review by lykkes_laeserier
Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
5.0
“Woman at Point Zero” (1973) by Nawal El Saadawi is primarily the story of the Egyptian woman Firdaus. We meet Firdaus on death row for killing a man through the eyes of a visiting psychiatrist, whom she agrees to talk to on her final night. The main body of the novel is Firdaus’ story in her own words.
We follow Firdaus from her early life as a poor and cowed young girl, dominated and downtrodden by the men around her. Firdaus eventually – inevitably? – turns to sex work and develops some rather bleak views on the world and the men running it. In Firdaus’ experience, men run everything to the detriment of every woman and girl around them, through violence and religion both. No woman is ever free, the prostitute only a little more so than the wife as she at least is free from the menial work of a household. But only as long as she retains ownership of her own body and the money it earns her.
“Woman at Point Zero” is based on a true story, the visiting psychiatrist being the writer herself. In 1973, Nawal El Saadawi visited the real Firdaus in Qanatir Prison as part of her research. Slowly, the historical Firdaus would relate her story, which forms the basis of this novel in dramatized form. Firdaus the woman was executed in late 1974 whereas Saadawi would go on to write a number of landmark works on the oppression of Arab women before herself being imprisoned in Qanatir Prison. Her crime? Criticising the regime of Anwar Sadat. After her imprisonment, Saadawi continued her feminist work for Arab women until her death in 2021.
This novel packs a punch. In all its bleakness, it shows how women everywhere (Firdaus, in many ways, is something of an Everywoman) have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of those men who use violence and religion to keep them down. It is not a criticism of religion but only of the men twisting it to suit their own baser desires. These men are portrayed as irredeemable and with no desire to change in almost dystopian tones.
Not for the faint of heart, but extremely powerful and so, so good. A feminist work not to be missed.
We follow Firdaus from her early life as a poor and cowed young girl, dominated and downtrodden by the men around her. Firdaus eventually – inevitably? – turns to sex work and develops some rather bleak views on the world and the men running it. In Firdaus’ experience, men run everything to the detriment of every woman and girl around them, through violence and religion both. No woman is ever free, the prostitute only a little more so than the wife as she at least is free from the menial work of a household. But only as long as she retains ownership of her own body and the money it earns her.
“Woman at Point Zero” is based on a true story, the visiting psychiatrist being the writer herself. In 1973, Nawal El Saadawi visited the real Firdaus in Qanatir Prison as part of her research. Slowly, the historical Firdaus would relate her story, which forms the basis of this novel in dramatized form. Firdaus the woman was executed in late 1974 whereas Saadawi would go on to write a number of landmark works on the oppression of Arab women before herself being imprisoned in Qanatir Prison. Her crime? Criticising the regime of Anwar Sadat. After her imprisonment, Saadawi continued her feminist work for Arab women until her death in 2021.
This novel packs a punch. In all its bleakness, it shows how women everywhere (Firdaus, in many ways, is something of an Everywoman) have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of those men who use violence and religion to keep them down. It is not a criticism of religion but only of the men twisting it to suit their own baser desires. These men are portrayed as irredeemable and with no desire to change in almost dystopian tones.
Not for the faint of heart, but extremely powerful and so, so good. A feminist work not to be missed.