El saadawi nawal biography of nancy

Long review = I actually took time to write and try this book justice = it's a good one.

I bought this book last summer and it has been gathering dust on my night stand ever since, close to becoming one of those books you buy and never read. But the reason I bought it in the first place, despite having never heard of Nawal El-Sadaawi, made me pick it up *at last*: the promise of an extremely well written autobiography about an Egyptian woman described with superlatives such as "the most influential feminist thinker" and "one of the greatest writers" of the Arab world.

I will say that, when you come from a 21st century, Western "feminists wear pink too" kind of perspective, some remarks El-Sadaawi makes might seem a little odd. Then again, you really can't judge her for it, seen as her coming of age story was that of a girl, deeply traumatized by societal expectations for women, trying with all her might to overcome this trauma and the countless obstacles in her way.

The scenes in which she analyzes the signs that lead her to believe her marriage was being arranged behind her back (sudden changes in the behavior of family members, etc) read like excerpts from a thriller or horror movie. The gendered violence she is traumatized by of course

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