From rulers to uninvited guests, from women to thieves, from dreams to names, from blindness to torture - in a series of ground-breaking studies, Power, Marginality, and the Body in Medieval Islam explores the multi-layered and complex textual universe of medieval Islam. The power of the ruler sits alongside the power of the trickster, as games of detection and verbal erudition are displayed for the edification of the reader. Humour is not lacking either as male and female characters indulge in various forms of wit that redefine and recast the sacred. For much of this world, the body reigns supreme: not only in illness and miracle cures but in displays of transgression and torture. Covering the range of literature from sacred text to history, biography and anecdote, this book provides a stimulating analysis of the world of medieval Islamic mentalites.

Men, Women, and God(s) is a pioneering study of the Arab world's leading feminist and most controversial woman writer, Nawal El Saadawi. Author of plays, memoirs, and such novels as Woman at Point Zero and The Innocence of the Devil, El Saadawi has become well known in the West as well as in the Arab community for her unforgettable female heroes and explosive narratives, which boldly address sexual violence, female circumcision, theology, and other politically charged themes. Her outspoken feminism and critique of patriarchy have also earned her the wrath of repressive forces in the Middle East. Imprisoned in her native Egypt under Sadat, El Saadawi is now among those on the death lists of Islamic religious conservatives. In Men, Women, and God(s) Fedwa Malti-Douglas makes the work of this important but little-understood writer truly accessible. Contending that El Saadawi's texts cannot be read in isolation from their Islamic and Arabic heritage, Malti-Douglas draws upon a deep knowledge of classical and modern Arabic textual traditions-and on extensive conversations with Nawal El Saadawi-to place the writer within her cultural and historical context. With this impassioned and radical exegesis of El Saadawi's prolific output, Malti-Douglas has written a crucial study of one of the most controversial and influential writers of our time. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

Woman's voice and body are closely entwined in the Arabo-Islamic tradition, argues Fedwa Malti-Douglas in this pioneering book. Spanning the ninth through twentieth centuries and covering a wide range of texts-from courtly anectdote to mystical and philosophical treatises, from works of geography to autobiography-this study reveals how woman's access to literary speech has remained mediated through her body. Malti-Douglas first analyzes classical texts (both well-known works like The Thousand and One Nights and others still ignored in the West) in which the female voice, often associated with wit or trickery of a sexual nature, is subordinated to the male scriptor. Showing how early Arabo-Islamic discourse continues to influence contemporary Arabic writing, she maintains that today feminist writers of novels, short stories, and autobiography must work through this tradition, even if they subvert or reject it in the end. Whereas woman in the classical period speaks through the body, woman in the modern period often turns corporeality into a literary weapon to achieve power over discourse. Fedwa Malti-Douglas is Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas, Austin. Her books include Structures of Avarice: The Bukhala' in Medieval Arabic Literature (Leiden) and Blindness and Autobiography: Al-Ayyam of Taha Husayn (Princeton). Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"What is this strange book" asks Fedwa Malti-Douglas, "that can bring the American presidency to its knees?" In this probing study of Kenneth W. Starr's influential and historic work, she reveals how "The Starr Report" exposed the cultural tendencies, desires, and taboos of Americans while it disrobed the most powerful man in the world.

Unveiling the political and ideological implications of the report's relentless pursuit of corporeal and prurient detail, Malti-Douglas underscores the document's ground-breaking nature -- both for its legal and cultural content. What does the report imply about American values when it repeatedly points to the dates on which trysts occurred? Why does gender seem so unstable in the report? And how do such varied objects as Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" or Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" or a Hugo Boss tie or "Vox, " a novel about phone sex, fit into the legal discourse of the report? Fraught with assumptions about gender and sexuality, the report reflects a strategy to use Clinton's "body natural" to undermine his "body politic."

The three-volume life-story of the Egyptian intellectual Tahah Husayn (1889-1973) is a landmark in modern autobiography, in Arabic letters, and in the literature of blindness. This justly celebrated text, however, has never been subjected to the sustained literary analysis here presented by Fedwa Malti-Douglas. Born into a modest family and blinded in childhood, Husayn nevertheless conquered first his own and then a European educational system to become one of his country's leading modernizers. Professor Malti-Douglas shows that the personal, social, and literary reality of the hero's blindness gives the autobiography its unity and force. Blindness and Autobiography is not only a rich explication of al-Ayyam but a pioneering study of the interaction between a severe physical handicap and the autobiographical process. It adds a new perspective to the contemporary discussion of the cultural uses of the body.

The first part of the book explores blindness and society, from the evolving conflict between personal and social conceptions of the handicap to the way blindness redefines the more familiar issues of traditional versus modern, East versus West. The second section examines the relationship of blindness to the autobiography's ecriture, rhetoric, and narration.

Originally published in 1988.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The three-volume life-story of the Egyptian intellectual Tahah Husayn (1889-1973) is a landmark in modern autobiography, in Arabic letters, and in the literature of blindness. This justly celebrated text, however, has never been subjected to the sustained literary analysis here presented by Fedwa Malti-Douglas. Born into a modest family and blinded in childhood, Husayn nevertheless conquered first his own and then a European educational system to become one of his country's leading modernizers. Professor Malti-Douglas shows that the personal, social, and literary reality of the hero's blindness gives the autobiography its unity and force. Blindness and Autobiography is not only a rich explication of al-Ayyam but a pioneering study of the interaction between a severe physical handicap and the autobiographical process. It adds a new perspective to the contemporary discussion of the cultural uses of the body. The first part of the book explores blindness and society, from the evolving conflict between personal and social conceptions of the handicap to the way blindness redefines the more familiar issues of traditional versus modern, East versus West. The second section examines the relationship of blindness to the autobiography's ecriture, rhetoric, and narration. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Woman's voice and body are closely entwined in the Arabo-Islamic tradition, argues Fedwa Malti-Douglas in this pioneering book. Spanning the ninth through twentieth centuries and covering a wide range of texts-from courtly anectdote to mystical and philosophical treatises, from works of geography to autobiography-this study reveals how woman's access to literary speech has remained mediated through her body. Malti-Douglas first analyzes classical texts (both well-known works like The Thousand and One Nights and others still ignored in the West) in which the female voice, often associated with wit or trickery of a sexual nature, is subordinated to the male scriptor. Showing how early Arabo-Islamic discourse continues to influence contemporary Arabic writing, she maintains that today feminist writers of novels, short stories, and autobiography must work through this tradition, even if they subvert or reject it in the end. Whereas woman in the classical period speaks through the body, woman in the modern period often turns corporeality into a literary weapon to achieve power over discourse. Fedwa Malti-Douglas is Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas, Austin. Her books include Structures of Avarice: The Bukhala' in Medieval Arabic Literature (Leiden) and Blindness and Autobiography: Al-Ayyam of Taha Husayn (Princeton). Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Bagdad has fallen. Saddam Hussein is in prison. These are the secret conversations between the American president and the imprisoned Iraqi dictator. Discover the secret plot to bring lasting peace to Iraq.

God Dies by the Nile is Saadawi's attempt to square religion with a society in which women are respected as equals; Searching expresses the poignancy of loss and doubt with the hypnotic intensity of a remembered dream; while in The Circling Song, Saadawi pursues the conflicts of sex, class, gender and military violence deep into the psyche.

"Fedwa Malti-Douglas . . . crosses linguistic, cultural, national, and religious frontiers; she gives consistency to an Islamic revival differentiated from Islamic fundamentalism, challenging methods, programs, problematisations of social, and political sciences applied to the study of the contemporary Islamic textual corpus. It is a needed contribution to the interpretation of the born-again phenomenon as expressed by female figures emerging from Islamic context where so far women are subjects talked about more than the subjects talking."--Mohammed Arkoun, editor of "Arabica

"The author's voice is nuanced by her wide knowledge of Islam, of feminism, and of life. One comes to know these women well, and to care about them. I was often deeply moved, and I was also often moved to laughter by the zany Marx Brothers--like collisions between the registers of East and West, or medicine and religion, or just between the wits of these gutsy, self-aware women and the flat-footed male establishment."--Wendy Doniger, author of "The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade"

"A remarkable book. Combining textual analysis and biography Fedwa Malti-Douglas opens new vistas in understanding Islamist women and gender relations in contemporary Islam."--John L. Esposito, University Professor, Georgetown University

Hamida and Hamido are twins, grown from a single embryo inside one womb. Violently parted, they search the city in the darkening circles of a dream, only to find, lose and find each other, each time as if it were the first. Their journey -- terrifying and exact -- leads to an unbroken cycle of corruption and brutality. With a precise and hypnotic intensity, "Circling Song" pursues the conflicts of sex, class, gender and military violence deep into the psyche.