Woman at point zero

Woman at Point Zero is Nawal El Saadawi's best-known novel, first published in Arabic in the 1970s and translated into English by Sherif Hetata (Zed Books, 1983). It is drawn from the author's meeting with a woman condemned to death in Qanatir Prison, who became the model for Firdaus.

The narrator is a psychiatrist researching women inmates. She is told about a notorious prisoner, Firdaus, who has been sentenced to death for murder and who refuses every visitor. On the day before her execution Firdaus finally agrees to talk, and the book is largely her own account, told in the first person.

Firdaus describes a childhood in a farming village, an uncle who takes her to Cairo, a marriage to a much older man, and a succession of men who beat, use or sell her. She finds brief moments of independence and affection, in school, in an office job and in her own work, and each time the world around her closes them off. What she finally does, and why she faces death without asking for mercy, is the book's last turn.

Short, direct and angry, the novel is read as a study of how poverty, marriage and the sex trade bind women in Egypt, and as a story about the little freedom a person can claim when she refuses to be bought. It contains sexual violence and abuse.