She holds honorary doctorates from, among others, the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso as well as Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Nawal El Saadawi has achieved widespread international recognition for her work. In July 2005, however, she was forced to withdraw her candidacy in the face of ongoing government persecution. In 2004 she presented herself as a candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, with a platform of human rights, democracy and greater freedom for women. For some years during the Mubarak regime, Saadawi lived in exile, teaching in universities in the USA and Europe, including Duke University and Washington State University. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, which was outlawed in 1991. She was released one month after Sadat's assassination. In 1981 Nawal El Saadawi publicly criticized the one-party rule of President Anwar Sadat, and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. It was followed in 1976 by God Dies by the Nile and in 1977 by her study of Arab women, The Hidden Face of Eve. Her most renowned novel, Woman at Point Zero, was published in Beirut in 1973.
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It was at this time that she began to write, in works of fiction and non-fiction, the books on the oppression of Arab women for which she has become famous. The magazine Health, which she founded and had edited for more than three years, was closed down.įrom 1973 to 1978 Saadawi worked at the High Institute of Literature and Science.
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In 1972, however, she lost her job in the government as a result of political pressure. During this time, she studied at Columbia University in New York, where she received her Master's degree in Public Health in 1966. After graduating from the University of Cairo Medical School in 1955, specializing in psychiatry, she practised as a medical doctor for two years.įrom 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked for the Egyptian government as Director General for Public Health Education. Unusually, she and her brothers and sisters were educated together. Nawal El Saadawi is an internationally renowned writer, novelist and fighter for women's rights both within Egypt and abroad.īorn in 1931, in a village outside Cairo, she wrote her first novel, Diary of a Child Called Souad, at the age of thirteen.