Zeina

September 19, 2011
The latest from El Saadawi (Woman at Point Zero), seamlessly translated by Nowaira, will haunt readers with its beautiful prose and harsh depiction of women's lives in Cairo. Flowing from present into past, reality into dreams, and between the stories of mother and daughters, El Saadwai explores the unequal roles of women and men in Egyptian society. Successful literary critic Boudour is writing a novel about circumstances that made her abandon an infant, Zeina, when she was a young college student. Later, Boudour married and raised another daughter, Mageeda, a successful writer who feels curiosity and jealousy toward Zeina, now a musical phenomenon. As Boudour tries to rewrite her life and recover her stolen novel, men repeatedly betray her and the other female characters; El Saadawi quotes at length from the Qur'an to illustrate the entrenched nature of this behavior. The shifting time line will keep readers guessing as to what happens next, and what is real versus imagined.

October 15, 2011
Bodour, a revered and highly educated literary critic trapped in a passionless marriage, knows her life could have taken a markedly different path. After falling in love with a handsome and energetic political activist in her college days, Bodour finds she is unable to confront the reality of raising an illegitimate daughter. She abandons baby Zeina on the streets of Cairo and attempts to ameliorate her unspoken grief by writing a thinly fictionalized novel. Once the novel disappears, however, Bodour must decide how to regain control of her life, her marriage, her work, and the daughter she left behind. El Saadawi's Zeina is a remarkable novel, focused on the complicated nuances of Arab feminism, maternity, religion, and cultural identity. El Saadawi's use of supporting characters to assist in the narration offers a fuller picture of the events at hand, while fans of Jhumpa Lahiri and Nathalie Abi-Ezzi will appreciate her deeply descriptive writing style. Through Zeina's flowing prose, heartfelt monologues, and timely themes, El Saadawi brings oft-unheard voices to the forefront of contemporary literature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)