In 2019, I was invited to present a love letter to a book at the Melbourne Writers Festival. Nawal El Saadawi’s seminal creative non-fiction book, Woman at Point Zero, edged out any competition. No other book I have read, which centres a flawed but authentic heroine, has affected me as deeply, a fact that played into my own understanding of how we talk about women, their issues and the cultural differences that influence how these manifest. I cannot dilute the significance of the book’s exploration of an Arab woman’s life. This is a book that did not just point out injustice, it ripped it apart, exposing the bones of our broken humanity.

I have revived this love letter because today I awoke to the sad news that El Saadawi has passed away at 89 years old. She was without doubt one of the most significant voices for Arab women in the Arab world and beyond. She was truly courageous in her expressions of injustice, a lyrical feminist writer but also a physician and psychiatrist with real-world experience. Her unapologetic but nuanced discussion of the treatment of women, the abuse of their bodies, and the poisonous approach to policing their sexuality has influenced the generations that followed her.