Kirjailija on taitava ja suorasanainen kertoja, joka säälimättä riisuu tekopyhyyden naamiot ja paljastaa miehen ja naisen sisimmän olemuksen.

These stories, as with the majority of El Saadawi's fiction, concern the roles and prejudices facing women in Egypt. They cover a variety of scenarios. The title story is about the fall of a minister, which begins when a woman in his employment dares to meet his gaze as he chastizes her. A story called 'The Veil' looks at the duality of a society in which women are freely viewed as sexual objects and yet are expected to behave asexually in public. My favorite story was 'The Greatest Crime', in which a women is brought to court, beaten, raped and tortured, for the crime of criticising the king, only for the judge to get in trouble for repeating the accusation against her. The thing that prevented me from liking most of the book, was the level of bitterness that El Saadawi writes with. I am obviously not saying that it is wrong for her to feel bitter about her life (including imprisonment) in Egyptian society, but I struggled with the unbridled spite and occasionally snide tone to most of the pieces. There was nothing uplifting and little to engage in a very negative work. The final story, a letter to an unnamed male artist, felt like El Saadawi was simply airing some dirty laundry in public. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood, but she lost me as an audience early on, and I struggled to get back.

This is a collection of short stories, which one is easily able to read in one sitting. But the subject matter will stay with you for a long time. It is an incredible piece of work. The Egyptian El-Saadawi is an activist, feminist writer and medical doctor who specialised in psychiatry and did extensive research into neuroses.

There are seven stories in the collection and each is a monologue of sorts, in which the characters evaluate their circumstances and reveal their state mind in the abnormal, unhealthy, false world they live in, where men reign supreme and women are personae non grata in almost all realms of existence.

Via the extremely personal, cerebral experiences and narratives of the men and women in the stories, El-Saadawi reveals how detrimental and damaging it is to the psyche of men and women, when people routinely repress their natural emotions and inclinations to play the disingenuous, callous roles inflicted on them since childhood. Each of the characters struggle intensely to define themselves in relation to others and feel they’re fighting a losing battle, almost akin to death.

El-Saadawi’s stories are sympathetic, subtle and powerful. This book is a searing and audacious indictment of Egyptian society, and one can see how El-Saadawi would have been dismissed from her post in the Ministry of Health, and imprisoned for her writings and her outspoken opinions, in a country where women were not even allowed to raise their eyes (what still about their voices) to meet that of men.

This is the best work I’ve read by this author, and I was completely bowled over by each of the stories. ( )