Arab Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond.

• Author: Allen, Roger

Zeidan's book is a major contribution to the growing library of works on Arab women writers. As the title implies, its particular value lies in the amount of detailed information that is provided about the earliest stages in the developmental process whereby women writers have gradually become participants in public literary discourse in the Arab world. Indeed, the value of the referential materials to this volume goes considerably beyond the confines of its narrower topic; the appendices list women's journals published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the footnotes are abundant in their discussion of various debates and ancillary issues connected with the book's primary topic.

The purview of this study is limited in certain significant ways. The title itself gives us a hint regarding the first. This is a work that focuses on the processes of writing and on women's struggle to gain the right to participate in the cultural community. The writers on whom Zeidan concentrates happen to be novelists, but, while there are discussions of their productions, the emphasis is more on the writers and the position of novels and novelists in society and considerably less on the esthetic features of the novels themselves. The second way in which the work restricts its subject matter is geographical; that is, Zeidan clearly announces his intention to deal only with writers in the central portion of the Arab world, essentially Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon. Bearing in mind his intention to focus in the first instance on "the formative years," this decision can be somewhat justified, but, as the later chapters approach the more contemporary period, Zeidan's decision to restrict his purview excludes some significant writers from other regions of the Arab world.

The initial chapters of this work are especially useful summaries of the early history of women's emergence as contributors to cultural life in Arab societies. The first chapter takes up the early debates and writings on issues such as marriage and veiling. Familiar names are all present - among female pioneers, Malak Hifni Nasif and Nazirah Zayn al-din, and among men, al-Tahtawi, Qasim Amin, and Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid. There is a particular focus on the question of education for girls, and the chapter also includes a section on the establishment of women's associations. The following chapter takes up the question of women as contributors to literature, going all the way...