Nawal el saadawi death wish full

Nawal el Saadawi, an Egyptian author, activist and physician who became an emblem of the struggle for women’s rights in the patriarchal Arab world and campaigned .

And the truth is savage and dangerous. So wrote Nawal El Saadawi, who has died at the age of 89, according to Egyptian media reports. The pioneering Egyptian doctor, feminist and writer spent decades sharing her own story and perspectives - in her novels, essays, autobiographies and eagerly attended talks. Her brutal honesty and unwavering dedication to improving the political and sexual rights of women inspired generations.

But in daring to speak dangerously, she was also subjected to outrage, death threats and imprisonment. Born in a village outside Cairo in , the second of nine children, El Saadawi wrote her first novel at the age of Her father was a government official, with little money, while her mother came from a wealthy background.

Nawal El Saadawi (Arabic: نوال السعداوي, ALA-LC: Nawāl as-Saaʻdāwī, 22 October – 21 March ) was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician.

Her family tried to make her marry at the age of 10, but when she resisted her mother stood by her. Her parents encouraged her education, El Saadawi wrote, but she realised at an early age that daughters were less valued than sons. Later she would describe how she stamped her foot in fury when her grandmother told her, "a boy is worth 15 girls at least Girls are a blight".

One of the childhood experiences El Saadawi documented with uncomfortable clarity was being subjected to female genital mutilation FGM at the age of six. In her book, The Hidden Face of Eve, she described undergoing the agonising procedure on the bathroom floor, as her mother stood alongside. She campaigned against FGM throughout her lifetime, arguing that it was a tool used to oppress women.

El Saadawi graduated with a degree in medicine from Cairo University in and worked as a doctor, eventually specialising in psychiatry. She went on to become director of public health for the Egyptian government, but was dismissed in after publishing her non-fiction book, Women and Sex, which railed against FGM and the sexual oppression of women.