Although the translation is sometimes difficult to read, and the vignettes are, at times contradictory or repetitive, this first part of Nawal El Saadawi's autobiography is essential. Chronicling the development of El Saadawi from a rebellious daughter (refusing all suitors, pursuing writing, education, and medicine even as those around her judge and put her down) to a budding doctor and activist, A Daughter of Isis, written during her exile after being placed on a death list by fundamentalists, shows how in some ways El Saadawi was an "accidental" activist--- she never really set out to be one, but because of her ethical views, her ideas of right and wrong, and her righteous anger, she became one.

That is not unique. Most people who change the world seem to not set out to do so, but are forced to fight for what they believe in because of their inner sense of justice, and because they see the injustice around them. El Saadawi wanted to write, but her writing and her life became forms of activism because she refused to accept gender, religious, and political discrimination and the multiplicity of ways in which these oppressions multiplied in her life.

Verdict: Recommended.