The Fall of the Imam Paperback – 20 July 2009

This is the sort of book that I felt I should like - or at least be impressed by - and feel vaguely disappointed with myself that I don't. Perhaps I'm not clever enough to enjoy it. That's not a good way to feel at the end of a story.It's a shame because within this book I think there probably is a good story and some good writing. But the way it is put together makes it nearly unreadable. Nothing is explained. Nothing is coherent. The chronology is mixed up. The narrator changes without any warning or signal as to who they are. Most of the time I had no idea who the point of view character was, when it was, or what was going on. Things happened that I was unsure if were dreams or 'real'.I can't even do a neat plot summary. There are a number of characters living in an unnamed Arabic speaking state, ruled by a dictator called the imam. Women are brutally suppressed. The character Bint Allah - a child or young woman growing up in a children's home - is (possibly) killed for reasons that are unclear to me, or possibly kills the imam, or both. I literally have no idea.If you like a book to make sense, this won't be for you, as it wasn't for me. I can take a certain amount of strangeness and ambiguity in a book, and even enjoy it - 'The Unconsoled' for example. But this is just too random and in trying to follow what was going on I just ended up irritated. When you read for pleasure, that's not the effect you're looking for.

The Fall of the Imam by Nawal El Saadawi gives the female perspective of living in an Islamic society where men are superior to women in every aspect. It is not an easy read with numerous religious references and imagery. The message is clear nonetheless about how the Imam by nature of his position feels he is above all humans and can do no wrong. A world where women have no worth and no voice.

Nawal el saadawi is a good writer. i fell sometimes things are lost in translation but a good feminist text to read. invloves corruption, patriarchal control and abuse.

An excellent read, very insightful.

The book came in an excellent condition. I enjoyed reading the book.

A bit too fast and furious for me

Nawal El Saadawi, b. 1931, is much more than one of the leading international writers, serving as national Director of Public Health and standing as candidate in the 2004 Egyptian Presidential elections as well as being active as a doctor, politician, feminist and militant. In this novel, translated from the Arabic by the her husband Sherif Hetata, b. 1923, she addresses inflexible religious belief, patriarchal power and gender inequality before the law.The style is both kaleidoscopic and fragmentary, reminiscent of the Thousand and One Nights, and repeatedly revisits two violent events through the eyes of a series of leading characters - Bint Allah [Daughter of God; ‘I had never seen God face to face, yet I thought He was my father and that my mother was His wife’], an orphan who is the illegitimate daughter of the eponymous Imam, his wife [an attractive ex-Christian who impresses when opening bazaars and hospitals], his Body Guard [and the Imam’s double], Security Chief and the jealous Great Writer, who befriended him at school.The Imam, who shares much with President Mubarek, is the autocratic ruler of an unnamed Middle Eastern country where ‘the price of a female water buffalo in the market is higher than that of a woman. A man owns four women but has only one female water buffalo’. A young stammering peasant, he ruthlessly achieved power by dominating the Party of God [Hizb Allah], betraying his mother, creating democratic respectability by funding a putative opposition party, Hizb al-Shaitain [Party of the Devil], upholding Shari’ah Law, taking what he wants [including supporters’ wives] and terrifying men, women and children.The events we repeatedly return to are the stoning to death of a young mother according to a fundamentalist interpretation of Shari’ah Law, Bint Allah’s youth in an orphanage and violent death, and the Imam’s assassination. These are considered within some forty short chapters written from the perspectives of the different characters, embracing first and third person narratives, and frequently merging characters – the bodyguard wears a rubber mask of the Imam, creating confusion about exactly who has been shot dead. Additional details and new perspectives are added with each repetition so that the reader quickly loses track of the true nature of what has been described before.Imagery swirls through the pages, such as the blackness of eagles, women’s clothes and night when women and girls are at greatest risk from male predators. In a late chapter, ‘The Imam and Bint Allah’, El Saadawi highlights the female power by describing the effects of the girl’s offering the Imam her bones to suck ‘cracking them like sticks of sugar cane and extracting the marrow from the inside, with his tongue and lips. She watched him as she would watch a sheep fattened for the Big Feast enter the butcher's shop, his eyes sinking into their sockets with fear, for in his eyes there was nothing but fear, a terrible fear. No matter how much he ate he was never satisfied and no matter how much he protected himself with all sorts of things he never felt secure. She handed him bone after bone, then gave him the shoulder blade followed by the rump and the spleen. His belly was full, swollen like a goat skin, but she continued to hand him one piece after the other until she heard the sound of an explosion and his face fell to the ground.’ This would be wonderful writing at any time but, in Egypt in 1988, is quite remarkable.In a powerful preface, El Saadawi explains that her novel was inspired by her experiences meeting young rape victims in Iran and members of the Association for people with amputated hands in Sudan, but took many years to complete, not least because of her anxiety over the sacrilegious name Bint Allah. This is a slim volume but an immensely important one.