Two Women in One

Bahiah Shaheen, an eighteen-year-old medical student and daughter of a prominent Egyptian public official, finds the male students in her class coarse and alien. Her father, too, seems to belong to a race apart. Frustrated by her hard-working, well-behaved, middle-class public persona, her meeting with a stranger at a gallery one day proves to be the beginning of her road to self-discovery and the start of her realisation that fulfilment in life is indeed possible.

Two Women in One is the story of countless women in the Third World, and speaks of their quest for emancipation and dignity.

Born in 1931, Nawal El Saadawi is a renowned Egyptian writer, novelist and activist. She has published over 40 books, which have been translated into over 30 languages. They include Memoirs of a Woman Doctor, Love in the Kingdom of Oil, Zeina and The Fall of the Imam (all published by Saqi Books).