The Lonely Heroines Pressed into Margins:El Saadawi’s Love in the Kingdom of Oil and Rum’s A Woman is No Man

The present study is a comparative feminist reading of the surreal and satirical novel Love in the Kingdom of Oil (۱۹۹۳) by the Arab novelist Nawal El Saadawi compared with the fictional diasporic novel, A Woman is No Man (۲۰۱۹) written by the Arab American novelist Etaf Rum. Considering ElSaadawi’s feminist term, Female genital mutilation, the current study aims to elucidate the ways through which society restricts women. Through their novels, El Saadawi and Rum present the protagonists as physically and psychologically oppressed under their patriarchal surrounding system. The authors’ lives are similar to that of their heroines in many ways due to them both facing similar Arab patriarchal oppression. These patriarchal traditions veil women’s minds, consider them inferiors, and deprive them of their basic rights based on the untrue claim that God has given these rights only to men.After the investigation of El Saadawi’s narration, it is concluded that despite the negligence of Arab woman’s rights by the patriarchal society these women can be and become stronger than any man can. These women are responsible for their houses and their children and can one day lead the world if they are given the chance to attain higher education and proper job.