FULLY BOOKED: Insight with Nawal El Saadawi

The internationally renowned Egyptian writer, novelist and activist Nawal El Saadawi will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with special correspondent and presenter for BBC News, Razia Iqbal on her 80th birthday to discuss her life’s work and the launch of a foundation that will embody the themes, ethos and characteristics that have shaped it.

Author of over 40 books that have been translated into over 30 languages and are taught in universities across the world,  Nawal El Saadawi has fought relentlessly against injustice and the barriers faced by women in Egypt, both in her work as a physician and psychiatrist and in her writing.

Viewed with suspicion by the Egyptian authorities, she was imprisoned in Qanatir Women’s Prison in 1981, drawing on her experience in her memoir, Memoirs from the Women’s Prison, 1983.

Forced to leave her country to teach in the USA after her name was included on a fundamentalist death list following the publication of her 1987 novel, The Fall of the Imam, she went on to defeat a case that demanded the withdrawal of her Egyptian nationality in reaction to her play God Resigns at the Summit Meeting. 

Nawal El Saadawi will be talking about the work that has taken her from rural Egypt, where she championed the interests of the women and challenged traditional customs to Tahrir Square in 2011 and the Foundation being established in her name.

With Sable LitMag and African Writers Abroad (PEN) Centre.