................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ iv Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One: Disruptions and Tensions: Egyptian Women’s Writing and the Quest for Independent National and Personal Identities ...................................................................... 43 Chapter Two: Images of the Liberated Women: Nawal El Saadawi’s Nationalist-Feminist Politics and Textual Strategies .............................................................................................. 91 Chapter Three: Re-writing the Patriarchal System: Contemporary Egyptian Women’s Writing and the Imagined National Communities .............................................................. 146 Chapter Four: Ahdaf Soueif: Embodying Egyptian Women’s Histories in the Transnational World .................................................................................................................................. 196 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 249 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 264