13 Books Published by Zed Books on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

The Black Lives Matter movement reinvigorated Black political movements around the globe. People who never thought of themselves as activists are on the march, while groups that struggled to be heard are finding themselves with a megaphone and an audience. But with this renewed energy also comes renewed questions: How far have we really come? And what’s the best way to keep moving forward?

In Back to Black, Kehinde Andrews argues that racism is inexorably embedded in the fabric of society, and that it can never be overcome unless by enacting change outside of this suffocating system. The book traces the long and eminent history of Black radical politics. It is an appeal to reclaim Black radicalism, a movement that has been diluted and moderated over time, willfully misrepresented and caricatured by others, and divested of its potency and potential for global change. Through chapters that center on topics such as cultural nationalism, black Marxism, and black survival, and including Black feminist and LGBTQ perspectives, Andrews explores the true roots of this tradition. He shows how its rich past encompasses figures such as Marcus Garvey, Angela Davis, and the Black Panthers, and then connects the dots to today’s struggles by showing what the politics of Black radicalism might look like in the twenty-first century.

Andrews maintains there is hope that revolutionary change is possible. But he warns there can be no hesitation or excuses: “It’s already too late to be standing on the side-lines waiting to see whether you should commit.” Back to Black is the definitive book on the roots and evolution of Black radicalism. It is a radiant call-to-action from one of the world’s most daring Black political voices.

Not so long ago, many spoke of a ’post-racial’ era, claiming that advances made by people of color showed that racial divisions were becoming a thing of the past. But the hollowness of such claims has been exposed by the rise of Trump and Brexit, both of which have revealed deep seated white resentment, and have been attended by a resurgence in hate crime and overt racial hatred on both sides of the Atlantic.

At a time when progress towards equality is not only stalling, but being actively reversed, how should anti-racist scholars respond? This collection carries on James Baldwin’s legacy of bearing witness to racial violence in its many forms. Its authors address how we got to this particular moment, arguing that it can only be truly understood by placing it within the wider historical and structural contexts that normalize racism and white supremacy. Its chapters engage with a wide range of contemporary issues and debates, from the whiteness of the recent women’s marches, to anti-racist education, to the question of Black resistance and intersectionality. Mapping out the problems we face, and the solutions we need, the book considers how anti-racist scholarship and activism can overcome the setbacks posed by the resurgence of white supremacy.

“Against the white sand, the contours of my father’s body were well defined, emphasized its existence in a world where everything was liquid, where the blue of the sea melted into the blue of the sky with nothing between. This independent existence was to become the outer world, the world of my father, of land, country, religion, language, moral codes. It was to become the world around me. A world made of male bodies in which my female body lived.”

Nawal El Saadawi is one of the greatest writers to come out of the Arab world. Born in a small Egyptian village in 1931, her life and writings have shown an extraordinary strength of character and a unique ability to create new worlds in the fight against oppression. Saadawi has been pilloried, censored, imprisoned and exiled for her refusal to accept the oppressions imposed on women by gender and class. Still, she continues to write.

A Daughter of Isis is the first part of this extraordinary woman’s autobiography. In it she paints a sensuously textured portrait of the childhood that produced the freedom fighter: from the trauma of female genital mutilation at seven years old to eluding the grasp of suitors at the age of ten. We see how, as a young adult qualifying, against the odds, as doctor, she moulded her own creative power into a weapon - and how her use of words became an act of rebellion against injustice.

’Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives. They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.’

Nawal El Saadawi is one of the greatest writers to come out of the Arab world. Born in a small Egyptian village in 1931, her life and writings have shown an extraordinary strength of character and a unique ability to create new worlds in the fight against oppression. Saadawi has been pilloried, censored, imprisoned and exiled for her refusal to accept the oppression imposed on women by gender and class. Still, she continues to write.

In A Daughter of Isis, Nawal El Saadawi painted a beautifully textured portrait of the childhood that molded her into a novelist and fearless campaigner for freedom and the rights of women. Walking through Fire takes up the story of her extraordinary life. We read about her as a rural doctor, trying to help a young girl escape from a terrible fate imposed on her by a brutal male tyranny. We learn about her activism for female empowerment and the authorities that try to obstruct her. We travel with her into exile after her name is put on a fundamentalist death list. We witness her three marriages, each offering in their way love, companionship and shared struggle. And we gain an unprecedented insight into this most wonderful of creative minds.

A classic of modern Arab writing, The Hidden Face of Eve receives fresh life with this beautiful new edition. Nawal El Saadawi’s shocking account of female oppression in the Muslim world is as powerful today as it was when it was first published. El Saadawi’s experiences working as a doctor in Egyptian villages, witnessing forced prostitution, honor killings, sexual abuse, and female circumcision, drove her to pen this book. The Hidden Face of Eve explores the circumstances that led to this violently unjust situation by examining historical roles of Arab women in religion and literature, ultimately arguing that injustices—such as polygamy, the veil, and legal inequality—are incompatible with the essence of Islam and inherent human rights.

“All the men I did get to know filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.”

So begins Firdaus’s remarkable story of rebellion against a society founded on lies, hypocrisy, brutality and oppression. Born to a peasant family in the Egyptian countryside, Firdaus struggles through childhood, seeking compassion and knowledge in a world which gives her little of either. As she grows up and escapes the fetters of her childhood, each new relationship teaches her a bitter but liberating truth - that the only free people are those who want nothing, fear nothing and hope for nothing.

This classic novel has been an inspiration to countless people across the world. Saadawi’s searing indictment of society’s brutal treatment of women continues to resonate today.

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.

In Diary of a Child Called Souad, El Saadwi gives us a young female protagonist whose spirit longs for freedom from the restraints in her world that she does not understand. Through Souad’s eyes, we see the oppression of women within a household, as we witness her grandfather’s fierce dominance over her family and her grandmother’s and aunt’s unbearable silence. With Souad’s story, El Saadwi paints a precise, tragic portrait of the personal—yet universal—tragedy experienced by an entire society of Egyptian girls.

The writing of Nawal el Saadawi is essential. Her dissident voice has consistently critiqued neo-imperialist international politics coupled with the oppression of women both in her native Egypt and in the world beyond. This book, the first volume in "Zed’s Essential Feminists" series, gathers a selection of the whole range of Saadawi’s writing together in one volume for the first time. From fiction — novellas and short stories — to essays on politics, culture, religion and sex, from extensive interviews to her work as a dramatist, from poetry to selections of her travel writing, this book will be essential to anyone wishing to gain a sense of the total range of Saadawi’s work.

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.

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.

Writer, doctor and militant, Nawal el Saadawi has had a major influence on the lives of women and men globally. Author of many books, both fiction and non-fiction, which challenge our thinking about the politics of sex, Third World development, the Arab world and writing itself, she has been a constant thorn in the side of the class and patriarchal systems.

This collection of her non-fiction writing since the publication of her seminal book on Arab women The Hidden Face of Eve (Zed Books, 1980) presents the full range of her extraordinary work. She explores a host of topics from women’s oppression at the hands of recent interpretations of Islam to the role of women in African literature, from the sexual politics of development initiatives to tourism in a ?post-colonial?age, from the nature of cultural identity to the subversive potential of creativity, from the fight against female genital mutilation to problems facing the internationalization of the women’s movement. Throughout her writing, she sheds new light on the power of women in resistance - against poverty, racism, fundamentalism, and inequality of all kinds.

Showing the intellectual and political development of an important thinker for the late twentieth century, this book is essential reading for students and lecturers in women’s studies, development studies and social theory. It is also a book anyone who wants to understand current global politics - in their widest sense - can not do without.

There is a growing sense that existing media have failed to serve the purposes of development, and in particular have not reflected either the concerns or the needs of the rural majority in Third World countries. Theatre, however, is now being used as a way of increasing popular participation in the development process. This book examines these experiences of training extension workers in the use of theatre-for-development, and explores the author’s own attempts - notable with the Marotholi Travelling Theatre in Lesotho - to develop a new model of theatrical communication. The structures of communication, Mda argues, should be democratized. They ought to increase participation, promote equity and self-reliance, and close the gap between people and government. Theatre in Africa has potential as a democratic medium for it can enable audience participation, integrate indigenous an popular systems of communicaiton and use whatever local resources are to hand. But he stresses it is important not to romanticise the democratic dimension of theatre-for-development. Intervention is also required as a technique. And not for all its forms - agitprop, forum theatre - have been successful. If theatre is to play a role in the expression of the development problems faced by people who are marginalized, then a more carefully thought out methodology combining intervention and participation is needed - to mobilize, provide a genuine two-way communication, and revitalize people’s own forms of cultural expression. A realistic awareness of the financial and political constraints that can undermine even the best-conceived projects is also vital.