Saadawi visited many women in the cell block and in the mental clinic and was able to conduct twenty-one in-depth case studies for her 1976 publication, Women and Neurosis in Egypt, but Firdaus remained 'a woman apart.' Firdaus was executed in 1974, but she left a lasting impact on Saadawi, who said she could not rest until she had written about Firdaus' story and finished the novel in one week. Saadawi was interested in meeting the woman and visiting the prison, and her colleague arranged for her to conduct her research at Qanatir Prison in the autumn of 1974. She began research on neurosis in Egyptian women, during which she met a doctor at Qanatir Prison who talked to her about the inmates, including a female prisoner who had killed a man and had been sentenced to hanging. The novel explores the themes of women and their place within a patriarchal society.Īt the end of 1972 Saadawi was removed from her position as the Director of Health Education and the Editor-in-Chief of Health magazine after the publication of Women and Sex. The novel is based on Saadawi's meeting with a female prisoner in Qanatir Prison and is the first-person account of Firdaus, a murderess who has agreed to tell her life story before her execution.

It concludes that there is a compelling need for contemporary female African novelists to give a fair representation of men in their novels.Woman at Point Zero ( Arabic: امرأة عند نقطة الصفر, Emra'a enda noktat el sifr) is a novel by Nawal El Saadawi written in 1975 and published in Arabic in 1977. The study demonstrates that Nawal El Sadaawi, like other reviewed African female novelists, gives an exaggerated negative and unfair representation of men in Woman at Point Zero. The radical feminist theory provides the theoretical framework. With a particular reference to Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero, it examines how several female African novelists have demonised men in their novels. However, not much study has been done on how the feminist-oriented female African novelists have deliberately demonised and bestialised the male characters in their novels in order to get even with the male novelists.

In response to the proclivity of male African novelists to relegate women to the background in their novels, many female African novelists have exposed the phallic nature of the African society in their novels. Studies abound on the phallic nature of African literature.

Saadawi woman at point zero