Woman At Point Zero

Mar 1

Woman At Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
Reviewed by Linda
📘📘📘📘📘

El Saadawi, now in her 90s, has dedicated her life to activism for women’s rights in Egypt and beyond and this story about Firdaus is essential to feminism. Although first published in 1975, it was only recently pushed back out into the mainstream a few years ago by @zedbooks. But even then, I speak to so many people about books and they’ve never heard of it. Why? Written by a non-white and non-Western woman from a patriarchal society - and post-colonial too - that’s why.

Now for the story. The title of this novel in Arabic is Firdaus, which means paradise. And it is indeed the relief of paradise that our protagonist Firdaus is waiting for as El Saadawi meets her in a Cairo prison just days before her execution date.

Through Nawal’s conversations with Firdaus we find out how and why she got there and the writer uses this scenario to relentlessly reveal to us the truth and hypocrisy about Egyptian patriarchal society. Although fictionalised, this is based on 100% truth and for me, this book drew many parallels to Abulhawa’s Against the Loveless World and Shafak’s 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.

Critical reading many decades after its release, there is a very poignant message that women shouldn’t be misled into thinking that the patriarchy gives women choices at all. It’s a small and precious book which holds a lot of value for me - I read this over 5 years ago and Firdaus stays with me till this day. Now I know why Nawal went to great lengths to see Firdaus and hear her story when nobody else did.

Lindawomen writerswriters of colournawal el saadawiegyptian authorsegyptmiddle eastzed booksfeminist non-fictionwoman at point zerofeminist fictionFiction

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

Woman At Point Zero

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