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Searching
Fouada meets Farid, her lover, every Tuesday in a restaurant overlooking the Nile. But this week their usual table is deserted. She calls his home, but the shrilling of the telephone echoes in an empty room. Farid has disappeared.
As she searches for him, Fouada becomes tormented by questions. She is a trained research chemist, but works in a dead-end ministry job. Convinced that she has something to give to the world, she cannot find it. What is it? Why does she search?
'Searching' expresses the poignancy of loss and doubt with the hypnotic intensity of a remembered dream.
As she searches for him, Fouada becomes tormented by questions. She is a trained research chemist, but works in a dead-end ministry job. Convinced that she has something to give to the world, she cannot find it. What is it? Why does she search?
'Searching' expresses the poignancy of loss and doubt with the hypnotic intensity of a remembered dream.
- GenresFictionEgyptLiterature
120 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 1991
5 people are currently reading
152 people want to read
About the author
Nawal El Saadawi
117 books3,607 followersNawal El Saadawi (Arabic: نوال السعداوي) was born in 1931, in a small village outside Cairo. Unusually, she and her brothers and sisters were educated together, and she graduated from the University of Cairo Medical School in 1955, specializing in psychiatry. For two years, she practiced as a medical doctor, both at the university and in her native Tahla.
From 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked as Director General for Public Health Education for the Egyptian government. During this time, she also studied at Columbia University in New York, where she received her Master of Public Health degree in 1966. Her first novel Memoirs of a Woman Doctor was published in Cairo in 1958. In 1972, however, she lost her job in the Egyptian government as a result of political pressure. The magazine, Health, which she had founded and edited for more than three years, was closed down.
From 1973 to 1978 Saadawi worked at the High Institute of Literature and Science. It was at this time that she began to write, in works of fiction and non-fiction, the books on the oppression of Arab women for which she has become famous. Her most famous novel, Woman at Point Zero was published in Beirut in 1973. It was followed in 1976 by God Dies by the Nile and in 1977 by The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World.
In 1981 Nawal El Saadawi publicly criticized the one-party rule of President Anwar Sadat, and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. She was released one month after his assassination. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, which was outlawed in 1991. When, in 1988, her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list, she and her second husband, Sherif Hetata, fled to the USA, where she taught at Duke University and Washington State University. She returned to Egypt in 1996.
In 2004 she presented herself as a candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, with a platform of human rights, democracy and greater freedom for women. In July 2005, however, she was forced to withdraw her candidacy in the face of ongoing government persecution.
Nawal El Saadawi has achieved widespread international recognition for her work. She holds honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso. Her many prizes and awards include the Great Minds of the Twentieth Century Prize, awarded by the American Biographical Institute in 2003, the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe and the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2004. Her books have been translated into over 28 languages worldwide. They are taught in universities across the world.
She now works as a writer, psychiatrist and activist. Her most recent novel, entitled Al Riwaya was published in Cairo in 2004.
From 1963 until 1972, Saadawi worked as Director General for Public Health Education for the Egyptian government. During this time, she also studied at Columbia University in New York, where she received her Master of Public Health degree in 1966. Her first novel Memoirs of a Woman Doctor was published in Cairo in 1958. In 1972, however, she lost her job in the Egyptian government as a result of political pressure. The magazine, Health, which she had founded and edited for more than three years, was closed down.
From 1973 to 1978 Saadawi worked at the High Institute of Literature and Science. It was at this time that she began to write, in works of fiction and non-fiction, the books on the oppression of Arab women for which she has become famous. Her most famous novel, Woman at Point Zero was published in Beirut in 1973. It was followed in 1976 by God Dies by the Nile and in 1977 by The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World.
In 1981 Nawal El Saadawi publicly criticized the one-party rule of President Anwar Sadat, and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. She was released one month after his assassination. In 1982, she established the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, which was outlawed in 1991. When, in 1988, her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list, she and her second husband, Sherif Hetata, fled to the USA, where she taught at Duke University and Washington State University. She returned to Egypt in 1996.
In 2004 she presented herself as a candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, with a platform of human rights, democracy and greater freedom for women. In July 2005, however, she was forced to withdraw her candidacy in the face of ongoing government persecution.
Nawal El Saadawi has achieved widespread international recognition for her work. She holds honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso. Her many prizes and awards include the Great Minds of the Twentieth Century Prize, awarded by the American Biographical Institute in 2003, the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe and the Premi Internacional Catalunya in 2004. Her books have been translated into over 28 languages worldwide. They are taught in universities across the world.
She now works as a writer, psychiatrist and activist. Her most recent novel, entitled Al Riwaya was published in Cairo in 2004.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 27, 2017
After a loved one vanishes, a women biochemist in Cairo, buffered from her field by a dead-end bureaucratic job, begins a process of self-reassessment, a search. As with other better Egyptianhe mode is modernist, the images the stuff of Kafka and nightmare, and the unreality of alienated contemporary life. While many of the problems she faces as a women would be tempting to dismiss as Egyptian or past problems, to do this is to ignore plenty of entirely current resonance. As such, they may serve as emblems of deeper and more universal malaise.
August 7, 2020
this would have been 5 stars if the end hadn't shifted focus back to her love interest. like her mother just died, this other man is exploiting her...why go through all this "searching" and existentialism if at the end it boils down to what happened to her boyfriend. women don't need to exist in relation to men and I wish the protagonist would have had that revelation at some point.
April 27, 2021
I was saddened to see on the internet that Nawal el-Saadawi, whom I have just begun reading, died on March 21 at the age of 89. A doctor, she was for a time the head of the Egyptian Public Health Service, before being removed by the conservative religious government of Anwar Sadat; she was later imprisoned by the Sadat regime for her political opinions and then spent the rest of her life as an activist for women's rights.
This short, early novel opens with a young woman realizing that her boyfriend has not shown up for their usual Tuesday evening date. We learn that she has a degree in chemistry and has been working for six years in a dead-end government job where she does no research. She makes a decision to open her own chemical laboratory. Over the course of the novel she begins questioning her life, goals and feelings, as well as the nature of the society around her, and gradually it becomes difficult to separate reality from her nightmares.
This short, early novel opens with a young woman realizing that her boyfriend has not shown up for their usual Tuesday evening date. We learn that she has a degree in chemistry and has been working for six years in a dead-end government job where she does no research. She makes a decision to open her own chemical laboratory. Over the course of the novel she begins questioning her life, goals and feelings, as well as the nature of the society around her, and gradually it becomes difficult to separate reality from her nightmares.
September 30, 2017
Enjoyed this novella on the challenges faced by an inquisitive Egyptian woman in a conformist society, and the obstacles society and cultural expectations put in her way. It's very well written and relateable as one feels they have entered the stream of consciousness of Fouada as we experience her thoughts, her pains and tribulations.
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August 22, 2021
Novel·la de tesi que, sincerament, m'ha semblat bastant freda. Tant que se m'ha fet difícil congeniar amb la protagonista i el seu fluxe de pensaments.
August 6, 2019
Em va atreure el poder apropar-me a la visió de la dona a país àrab. Un tant desencoraratjador x l opressió i limitació que s'autoimposa la protagonista. Fàcil lectura i amb sensació que podria donar de més de sí la història.
October 7, 2025
Beautiful writing as ever but plot was lowkey frustrating - hard to empathise with main character
January 16, 2026
she’s just like me
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews