I have been aware of injustice since I was a child. I was born female, in a poor family in the village. And I was brought up between two classes: The poor family of my father, and the bourgeois family of my mother. So I was conscious of class oppression. And I was conscious of gender as a girl, because they circumcised me. I had to divorce two husbands to write. I went to prison. I lost my job. The fundamentalists tried to divorce me from my husband two years ago. So I am oppressed. I’m fighting for my own liberation. My country, Egypt, is colonised by the Americans and by the World Bank. We are becoming poorer and poorer, more and more oppressed. The Americans and the government in Egypt encouraged Islamic fundamentalism. And they are veiling women, circumcising them, and oppressing them. So it would be unnatural if I didn’t speak. It would be very unnatural.
 
Nawal El Saadawi, writer, psychiatrist, born 1931, Egypt
As a child Nawal El Saadawi had already begun to write. Central issues of her works are the oppression of women and their wish for self-determination. In the 1970s El Saadawi began to openly criticise the patriarchal system, female circumcision and child abuse. Her novels and books on the situation of women in Egyptian and Arabian society are known throughout the world and have had a great influence on generations of younger women.