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Outlook: The secret prison book written on toilet paper

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Nawal el-Saadawi looks at the camera as she sits side on to a full bookcase in her home in Cairo, Egypt, in 2015

20/04/2021 GMT

The secret prison book written on toilet paper

BBC World Service - Outlook, The secret prison book written on toilet paper

Remembering the great Egyptian writer and feminist icon, Nawal el-Saadawi

Remembering the great Egyptian writer Nawal el-Saadawi, who secretly wrote in prison using only eyebrow pencil and toilet paper; and the final part of Paul Mendez’s interview.

Nawal el-Saadawi, the pioneering Egyptian psychiatrist, feminist and writer died last month at the age of 89. Her classic novel Woman at Point Zero tells the true story of a woman sentenced to death for murder. When it was published in 1975, it shocked the establishment and thrust Nawal into the forefront of the fight for women’s rights in the Middle East. Later, when she was a political prisoner, she wrote a memoir in her cell, in secret, using just an eyebrow pencil and toilet paper. She spoke to Jo Fidgen in 2015.

The final part of Jo Fidgen’s interview with Paul Mendez, who went from being a devout Jehovah’s Witness believing homosexuality to be a sin, to becoming a sex worker. He’s now a writer and his debut novel is the semi-autobiographical Rainbow Milk. The full interview with Paul Mendez is also available on the Outlook podcast.

Nizar Ibrahim is a palaeontologist who spends a lot of time digging for dinosaur fossils in the rocks of the Sahara, but the story of his biggest find starts on the streets of an oasis town. While on his way back from a dig in southern Morocco he came across a man with a moustache who had a box of unusual looking dinosaur fossils - they'd been dug up to be sold to tourists. Nizar bought them and then left Morocco, but as time went on he became convinced that the fossils were from a little known carnivorous giant called the Spinosaurus. Nizar was desperate to find the site these fossils came from, but first he needed to find the fossil hunter with the moustache.  

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com

Picture: Nawal el-Saadawi in her home in Cairo, Egypt, in 2015 
Credit: David Degner/Getty Images

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