Ructions in the Seraglio
Ruth Bernard Yeazell, 8 December 1994
The Harem Within: Tales of a Moroccan Girlhood
by Fatima Mernissi.
Doubleday, 254 pp., £16.99, September 1994,0 385 40542 1 Show More
by Fatima Mernissi.
Doubleday, 254 pp., £16.99, September 1994,
Ramza
by Out el Kouloub, translated by Nayra Atiya.
Syracuse, 201 pp., £13.50, July 1994,0 8156 0280 4 Show More
by Out el Kouloub, translated by Nayra Atiya.
Syracuse, 201 pp., £13.50, July 1994,
“... published in France in 1958 and has been freely translated into English for the present edition by Nayra Atiya. Though it reads like autobiography, Ramza is a fiction, whose all-too-symbolically named heroine (‘Ramza’ means ‘symbol’) engages in a thwarted but prophetic struggle against the restrictions of the harem. Set in late 19th-century Egypt ... ”
