Woman at Point Zero
Nawal El Saadawi
In 1972, Saadawi began doing research on neurosis in Egyptian women, including interviews with female prisoners at Qanatir Prison. There, she met Firdaus, who refused to be interviewed until the day she was schedule to be executed. Woman at Point Zero tells Firdaus’s life story, from her childhood through her execution for the murder of her pimp.
Major thematic elements: Power and survival, self-determination, religious hypocrisy.
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IB Literature and IB Language and Literature Connections
Place of publication: Beirut, Lebanon
Language: Arabic
Era: 20th Century
Genre: Prose: Nonfiction (Creative Nonfiction)
Author: Female
Readers, writers and texts | Time and space | Intertextuality: Connecting texts
Identity | Culture | Creativity | Communication
Perspective | Transformation | Representation
Full text, basic summaries, and overviews
Woman at Point Zero | Full text
This is a PDF version of the full text, translated by Sherif Hetata.
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Woman at Point Zero Study Guide | Spark Notes
This guide includes a list of characters, literary devices, and quotes, but no summary.
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Woman at Point Zero | Lit Charts
Note: the full study guide is locked behind a paywall. Still, what resources are available for free are good.
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An Egyptian classic of feminist fiction | The Guardian | Minna Salami | October 2015 | Book Review
This review was written for the republication of Woman at Point Zero. It includes excellent commentary on the significance of the text.
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Woman at Point Zero | YouTube | Dupree Reads | November 20, 2019 | 3:38
In this video, a college student reviews Woman at Point Zero after reading and studying it for her college class. She summarizes the text, highlights some of the big-picture questions her class discussed, emphasizes how quickly the book can be read, It’s a good idea to preview for content: there is a discussion of religion and the relationship between prostitution and female agency.
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About the author
She Spoke the Unspeakable | Documentary | 60 minutes
The best link (least popup ads) we found to this video is on Allen Charlton’s website. This video includes voiceover readings of El Saadawi’s writing, news footage, El Saadawi’s fight against FGM (female genital mutliation), interviews with Margaret Atwood,
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Nawal El Saadawi Obituaries
We’re linking three obituaries here; they vary slightly in length (BBC ~1000, Guardian and NYTimes ~1500) and content.
BBC News | The Guardian | New York Times
How Nawal El Saadawi Shook Up the Patriarchy in Egypt | YouTube | Now This News | 5:34
In this video, activist Jana Amin talks about El Saadawi’s actions and legacy, especially among 21st century Arab women.
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Egypt’s Voice of Freedom (Great Mind Documentary) | Real Stories | YouTube | 51:56
From the video description: “The documentary charts the most important stages in the life of this extraordinary woman - a woman who risked her life for her convictions more than once, a woman who never gave up her mission despite death threats from fundamentalists and unspeakable conditions at the women’s prison under President Sadat. Nawal El Saadawi’s biography encompasses more than eight decades of contemporary Egyptian history as experienced from a female perspective.
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Nawal El Saadawi | Wikipedia
Wikipedia’s page on El Saadawi includes details on her early life, career, writing, views, and more.
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Articles, essays, and videos about Woman at Point Zero
Decolonization and Nationalism Triumphant: Crash Course World History #40 | YouTube | Crash Course | 12:40 / 1:30
This video may help students contextualize the novel. The link below goes right to the beginning of the 90-second clip about Egypt.
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Islam, the Quran, and the Five Pillars: Crash Course World History #13 | YouTube | Crash Course | 12:52
This video may also help provide students with context for the novel, especially if they don’t have any familiarity with Islam. From the video’s description: ”John green teaches you about the history of Islam, including the revelation of the Qu’ran to Muhammed, the five pillars of Islam, how the Islamic empire got it start, the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and more.”
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Egyptian Market Scenes (1970-1979) | YouTube | British Panthé | April 2014 | 4:23
This video (without sound) has scenes from an Egyptian market. It’s a good way to show students what the 1970s in Egypt would have looked like.
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Woman at Point Zero A Timeline of Women’s Rights in Egypt | Gradesaver.com
This timeline could do with more contemporary details, but is a good start to help students contextualize history and the text.
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Nasser - From Pan-Arab Dream to National Disaster | Free Documentary History | YouTube | 53:04
This video includes commentary, historical footage, and many interviews with historians and journalists.
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Nawal El Saadawi: ‘The revolution will win, because of the millions that are united’ | YouTube | The Guardian | 4:34
”Egyptian feminist writer and activist Nawal El Saadawi on her country’s long-awaited revolution and why Egypt still has a long way to go.”
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Here’s How the Arab Spring Started and How it Affected the World | History | YouTube 3:45
While it doesn’t connect to the text, if you have students with little background on contemporary Tunisia and its neighbors during the Arab Spring, this is a short, engaging, and informative video.
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Woman at Point Zero Oral Interactive | YouTube | Darcy Reimer | 1:59
This student project (likely from the previous IB Literature curriculum’s Internal Assessment), highlights the narrative mode of Woman at Point Zero.
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Gender and identity reflected in the works of Nawal Al-Sa’adawi and Samihah Khrais | DePaul University | Zachary Oesterreicher | June 2021 | Masters Thesis
Chapter 2 of this thesis, which focuses on the works of Nawal El Saadawi, can be found on PDF pages 28-43.
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Imprisonment, freedom, and literary opacity in the work of Nawal El Saadawi and Assia Djebar | Exeter College, Oxford University, UK | Jane Hiddleson | 2010
This article “explores a selection of works by El Saadawi…from an aesthetic perspective. El Saadawi [uses] literary writing as a means to escape the constraints placed upon [her] by patriarchy, as well as by colonialism, and uphold creativity and poetry as a possible release from imprisonment.” PDF pages 5-10 and 15-16 focus most closely on El Saadawi.
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Empowering the Subaltern in Woman at Point Zero | Journey of International Women’s Studies | Saaddik Gohar | July 2016
The aim of this paper is to “establish a dialogue and outline the benefits of comparative feminist discourse with regard to patriarchal policies in the Middle East. The paper argues that El Saadawi challenges the hegemony of a traditionally phallocentric society empowered by religion and masculinity.”
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Lesson plans and other teaching resources
Woman at Point Zero PowerPoint | Warwick.ac.uk
This PowerPoint includes a short biography, questions about the authenticity of the novel, critical reactions to the novel, discussion questions, and connections to the text Algeria Unveiled by Frantz Fanon.
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Guided Discussion of Woman at Point Zero, El Saadawi, First Section of Text | Colleen Clemens via Teachers Pay Teachers | Free Handout
This handout identifies five quotes from the first section of the texts and asks students to respond to them.
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Woman at Point Zero | Sweet Polka-Dots
Rather than using this page as a teaching tool, we suggest using this page to inspire a project for students. This page on Woman at Point Zero is broken into sections: quotations, characters, setting analysis, opening/closing scene analysis, identification of major metaphors, motifs, and images, AP questions, and more.
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Woman at Point Zero Essay Topics & Writing assignments | BookRags
Most of this unit plan for Woman at Point Zero is locked behind a paywall, but this page does have three essay topics available to view.
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Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi: Character Analysis | Eduzaurus | Student Essay
This student-written essay analyzes Firdaus. It could be used as a sample to grade against your own rubrics, a sample to use to break down the choices the writer has made re: organization, quoting the text, etc.
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11th and 12th Grade - Literature - Woman at Point Zero - Cultural and Historical Context | International School Manila
This page has links to articles that support the study of Woman at Point Zero. Topics include Law, Women and Egypt, Female Circumcision, and Egyptian Economic Crisis in the 70s.
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Shopping List
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Woman at Point Zero
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The Essential Nawal El Saadawi: A Reader (2010) Paperback on Amazon.com
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The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World (2016)
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Woman at Point Zero (Spark Notes Literature Guide)
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Lesson Plans: Woman at Point Zero (BookRags)
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