- Yūsuf Idrīs’ (1927 – 1991, Egypt) short story ‘ʿAlā Asyūṭ’ (‘To Assyut’) describes the conditions of government hospitals in an Egypt of the past. It centers a doctor working at the hospital when he meets a patient from Asyut with gangrene in his foot. The story shows the discrepancy between the advanced technology and medicine in the hospital, and the fact that the man from Asyut is still suffering from something like gangrene. The story is written in the Egyptian dialect and can be found in the collection Arkhaṣ Layālī (reference) (‘Cheapest nights’, 1954).
- Inʿām Kachachī (1952-, Iraq) – Ṭishshārī (2013, English trans. The Dispersal, 2022). Heroine of Ṭishshārī is Wardiyah, an elderly doctor working in Southern Iraq who is forced into exile together with her three daughters after threats by militias. Wardiyah flees to Paris and lives in her brother’s house where she recalls living in the Iraq of the 1950s, when different segments of society intermingled as one. The novel also follows the life of the three daughters, particularly the eldest, who becomes a doctor in Canada. The title of the novel, Ṭishshārī, refers to the dispersion of the ‘Iraqi family’, as the word in the Iraqi dialect means bullets that scatter in the air for maximal (also in W: Outside of the Arab World: Americas: Canada).
- Umayymah al-Khamīs (1966-, Saudi Arabia) – al-Wārifah (‘The leafy tree’, 2009). This novel portrays the doctor Jawharah, who works in a hospital in the Ulaishah neighbourhood of Riyadh in the 1980s and 1990s, and portrays her inner tensions between the desire to live the way she wants, and the social constrains that bind her (reference). Jawharah is portrayed as a working woman, but also as someone going through a loveless marriage and a divorce, and, as such, reflects on love in a patriarchal society (reference). The story centers on female voices; in addition to Jawhara, there are her two sisters, Hind and Ruqqayah, and her mother, Haylah (reference) (also in C: Cities: Saudi Arabia: Riyadh and F: Children and Family Life: Marriage: Divorce and Separation).
- Ibrāhīm al-Nāṣir (1933 – 2013, Saudi Arabia) – Safīnat al-Mawtā (‘The ship of dead’, 1969) (reissued in 1989 as Safīnat al-Ḍayāʾ (‘The ship of loss’)). This novel is set in the Riyadh Central Hospital in Saudi Arabia. Its main character, ʿĪsā, works in the hospital as assistant manager, though in his free time he reads and writes poetry. The novel shows Saudi Arabia’s changing society and developments through the story of the hospital and its employees, including that of his love interest, the nurse ʿAbīr, and the cleaners of the hospital who threaten a strike for an increased salary. The novel provides a vivid account of the old hospital, the only in Saudi Arabia at the time, but also life in the different quarters of Riyadh (reference) (also in C: Cities: Saudi Arabia: Riyadh).
- Nawāl al-Saʿadāwī (1931 – 2021, Egypt) – Mudhakkirāt Ṭabībah (1958, English trans. Memoirs of a Woman Doctor, 2001). This autobiography describes the author’s coming-of-age as a young Egyptian woman studying medicine and becoming a doctor. Al-Saʿadāwī uses her experiences as a doctor and psychiatrist to express the internal and external conflicts that women experience (reference). She describes how her obtained knowledge challenges patriarchal and religious-conservative conceptions of womanhood, such as the medical versus religious conception of menstruation. She also interweaves her personal story with the political circumstances through the story of urban, educated Egyptian women in the decolonizing era of the 1950s (reference) (also in M: Memoirs).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Gamal El-Din Taher. 2013. “Naqd li-Khams Qiṣṣaṣ Mutanawaʿah li-l-Kātib Yūsif Idrīs.” www.shomosnews.com, July 2013, https://www.shomosnews.com/نقد-لخمس-قصص-متنوعة-للكاتب-يوسف-ادريس/ (last accessed 3 May 2023)
- Amīrah Muḥārib al-ʿUtaybī. 2021. “Taʾwīliyah al-Ḥiss al-Unthawī fī al-Riwāyah al-Nisāʾiyah al-Saʿūdiyah: Riwāyāt Umayymah al-Khamīs Namūdhijan.” In Majallah Kuliyyah Dār al-ʿUlūm 38(136): 251-275, p. 258, 271
- Sultan S.M. Al-Qahtani. 1994. The novel in Saudi Arabia: emergence and development 1930-1989: an historical and critical study. (doctoral dissertation University of Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom) Retrieved from http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8131/ (last accessed 4 May 2021) p. 79-81
- Evelyne Accad.1995. “Arab Women’s Literary Inscriptions” in College Literature Vol. 22: 1 pp. 172-180, p. 175
- Khadidiatou Guèye. 2010. “‘Tyrannical Femininity’ in Nawal El Saadawi’s ‘Memoirs of a Woman Doctor’.” Reseach in African Literatures 41(2): 161-172, p 165