Books by Hala El Badry

What was it like to live in Iraq before the earth-shaking events of the end of the twentieth century? The mid-seventies to the late eighties witnessed Saddam Hussein's rise to power, the establishment of Kurdish autonomy in the north, and the Iraq-Iran war. It also brought an influx of oil wealth and a parallel influx of Arab talent, including many Egyptians.The narrator has a behind-the-scenes view of what was really happening at a critical juncture in the history of the region. Moreover, she has a mystery to solve: an Iraqi woman, a communist journalist, has disappeared...

In A Certain Woman, Nahid is a woman determined to go on a journey of self-discovery-searching for liberation, not from a repressive society or a male-dominated world, but from self-imposed taboos that inhibit a woman's ability to find fulfillment and to confront the many imponderables surrounding sexuality, desire, and love.