Prisoners

In 2019, I was invited to present a love letter to a book at the Melbourne Writers Festival. Nawal El Saadawi’s seminal creative non-fiction book, Woman at Point Zero, edged out any competition. No other book I have read, which centres a flawed but authentic heroine, has affected me as deeply, a fact that played into my own understanding of how we talk about women, their issues and the cultural differences that influence how these manifest. I cannot dilute the significance of the book’s exploration of an Arab woman’s life. This is a book that did not just point out injustice, it ripped it apart, exposing the bones of our broken humanity.