The Open Door is a landmark of women's writing in Arabic. Published
in 1960, it was very bold for its time in exploring a middle-class
Egyptian girl's coming of sexual and political age, in the context
of the Egyptian nationalist movement preceding the 1952 revolution.
The novel traces the pressures on young women and young men of that
time and class as they seek to free themselves of family control
and social expectations. Young Layla and her brother become
involved in the student activism of the 1940s and early 1950s and
in the popular resistance to continued imperialist rule; the story
culminates in the 1956 Suez Crisis, when Gamal Abd al-Nasser's
nationalization of the Canal led to a British, French, and Israeli
invasion. Not only daring in her themes, Latifa al-Zayyat was also
bold in her use of colloquial Arabic, and the novel contains some
of the liveliest dialogue in modern Arabic literature."Not only a
great novel, but a literary landmark that shaped our
consciousness."--Abdel Moneim Tallima "A great anticolonialist work
in a feminist key."--Ferial Ghazoul "Latifa al-Zayyat greatly
helped all of us Egyptian writers in our early writing
careers."--Naguib Mahfouz
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