Image Source: Sister Namibia

"For most of my life I just wrote for myself ... I never told anybody." said Namibian writer, Neshani Andreas in a 2005 interview with Erika von Wietersheim.

I lived in a world that did not make sense to anybody else. On the other hand I had to fit into a world around me that did not make much sense to me.

Source: litterature et ecrivains dailleurs

Source: Author Photo. Heinemann AWS edition of Distant View of a Minaret.

A caption under a picture of Alifa Rifaat in a 1993 Middle East Times (Egypt) captures Rifaat's intentions for writing about women's lives and sexuality: she is inspired, the caption reads, 'by a woman's Islamic right to a fulfilled emotional and sexual life'. - Barbara A. Olive on Alifa Rifaat's Short Stories.

Her husband was furious, not so much because of the subject matter, but because writing gave her a kind of independence and was perceived as undermining his authority as a husband and head of the family. She continued to write, using pen-names, but when he found out, her husband forbade that too. He threw her out of the house. She went back to her own family, but received no sympathy from her father, who also said she should stop writing.

But against those people who urged her to get a divorce, Alifa Rifaat argued that "it is better to be an unknown wife than a well-known writer". For the next 15 years she wrote a little, and then only in secret. But being forced to repress the urge to be read brought her close to a nervous breakdown, a state vividly evoked in some of her stories.

Finally, in the early 1970's, her husband relented and she began to write again. The result was her collection of short stories, 'Distant View from a Minaret', which dwell on the tensions, dilemmas and dreams of women in marriage.

While much of Rifaat's later writing is deeply rooted in her experience, the most important theme in her stories centres on the sexual and emotional problems encountered by women in marriage. ... in the years she spent travelling around Egypt with her husband (in the course of his work as a policeman) she met many other women and learned of their problems. "We used to talk freely and we discussed especially the question of sexual fulfilment - because our society does not allow us to experience sex as freely as a Western woman does", she told Sarah Graham.

Rifaat, however, is not a feminist in the Western-sense. 'Women', she says, 'have a right to be fulfilled in their sexual and emotional lives', though she does not question marital relationships as such. What she does argue is that men should wield the power they have over women in marriage much more responsibly than they usually do. She also argues for more sexual education for women, 'if only through books'.

Rifaat's fiction has met with a range of responses, from conservative efforts to keep her fiction out of bookstores, to encouragements from her literary acquaintances to write even more boldly about the lives of women.

Alifa Rifaat spoke and wrote only in Arabic - about stories that were deeply rooted in the Arabic and Islamic traditions, and also dealt with themes of eroticism and sexuality, which is said to have distinguished her from other male and female writers in the Arab world, where explicit references to these topics are typically considered taboo. Olive further notes that Rifaat's fiction has not gained wider recognition, and offers the following reasons:

Although she is self-educated, having read methodically through a number of small libraries during the years of her exile from writing, Rifaat does not possess a university degree and thus does not have direct connections to academic literary groups. With the exception of two pilgrimages to Mecca and one visit to Europe, she has traveled little, remaining a quiet secret for most readers outside of Egypt. Finally, Rifaat's professed devotion to Islam has allowed for easy categorisation of her fiction as limited, with critics often interpreting her female protagonists as weak or submissive.

Mariama Ba around 25. Source: UNESCO

Yes, this is the first time that I wrote a serious novel. I have written before when I was a schoolgirl. I wrote essays for homework which were published. I wrote a dissertation which was published by the ‘Review Espirit’ a long time ago. I have written articles for newspapers, lots of them, but this book is my first serious effort to see the light. This is my first book.

Mariama Ba being awarded the Noma Prize in 1980. Source: AUFS Report, 1981.

I was very surprised. Even more so because I did not know of the existence of the prize. And even more, I did not even know that my book was being considered for any prize … A friend came to my house to tell me I had won. I was unaware of it. I didn’t even realise that there was prize money … I was even more proud and happy because it was not only a prize for Francophone Africa, but a prize for black Africa. That is, all of French- and English-speaking Africa. There were many candidates, so it was a prize which obviously was important.

Yes, and it is finished. I do not know if it is going to receive the same reception as 'Une si longue lettre'. As a matter of fact, it is the reception of 'Une si longue lettre' which makes me more and more hesitant to deliver this work to publishers. This first reception was so good, the book has been so well liked, that I wonder what kind of reception will be given to this other book.

I have taken the white wife and the African husband as the theme. Here, if a black woman married to a white man, we can easily accept that, at least more easily accept it … The colonialists took black women as wives and it never was a tragedy, you see … Because here in Senegal, it is the woman who is given into marriage, and belongs to the husband’s family. It is not the same thing with a man. The man bears the family name. He is the root of the tree which flourishes to give fruit. The fruits contain the seed which will make the race live again and nourish the ground. Thus the problem of a white wife is more interesting from the point of view of the mentality of the man’s mother, and from the point of view of society. There are more possible situations. So my book is about a white wife and a black husband.

If they were in France there would not be any problem. If the book was set in France, in Europe, anywhere else, there would not be a problem. They could isolate themselves from the parents and the others. It would not be the same thing.

I had the good fortune to attend the French school (which is now Berthe Maubert School on Avenue Albert Sarraut) thanks to the perseverance of my father who, whenever he had a holiday, would come to beg my grandparents to continue to grant him this favour.

During school holidays I continued my Koranic studies at the residence of the late Amadou Lamine Diene … He had become the Imam of the main mosque in Dakar, and his nephew, the current Imam, El Hadji Mawdo Sylla, was my teacher. The fact that I went to school didn’t relieve me from the domestic duties little girls had to do. I had my turn at cooking and washing up. I learned to do my own laundry and to wield the pestle because, it was feared, 'you never know what the future might bring!’

A year after the Primary School Certificate Examination in 1943, I had the joy of coming first in French West Africa at the competitive examination for entry to the École Normake in Rufique. My father was away in Niamey and Mrs. Berthe Maubert (primary school teacher) had the lonely task of overcoming the resistance of my family who had had enough of “all this coming and going on the road to nowhere.”

A man of finance, but also a man of letters, my father taught me to read. A flood of books accompanied his homecomings. It is from him that I learned how to express myself orally. He would have me recite in French what I had learned, and never tired of correcting me.

Really, in some ways one can say that the Noma prize has rekindled the fire of hope … This Japanese publisher thinks of promoting African books, to give something so that African literature goes forward. That is the meaning of this gesture for me. The existence of all such prizes is always an encouragement. That is what it really shows. As I was saying earlier, books are an instrument for development and books must not die. We must encourage people to write, to allow the great flourishing of writing.