SOURCE: Ingersoll, Earl G. “Nawal El Saadawi's The Fall of the Imam and the Possibility of a Feminine Writing.” International Fiction Review 28, nos. 1-2 (2001): 23-31.

In the following essay, Ingersoll probes the style of The Fall of the Imam and maintains that through the use of fantasy, multiple points of view, and non-linear plot techniques, El Saadawi focuses on patriarchal societies and religions while controverting the masculine narrative structures used in most novels and replacing the form with a more feminine discourse.

The writing of Nawal El Saadawi¹ reminds readers that not all “democracies” of what we used to be comfortable calling the “free world” are quite as respectful of civil liberties as we often naively assume them to be. Saadawi was trained first as a physician and later as a psychiatrist—something of a professional feat for an Egyptian woman a generation ago, given the restrictions on...