Sherif Hetata, the author, was first arrested when, on completion of his medical studies in the mid-forties, he became involved in the turbulent politics of post-war Egypt. In 1950 he escaped from prison and fled to Paris, where he spent a brief year of freedom. Returning secretly to Egypt, he was eventually caught and sentences to ten years” penal servitude. Two of these were spent in iron shackles working in a stone quarry. On his release in 1966 he worked first in the Ministry of Health – where he met and married the feminist and writer Nawal El Saadawi – and then for the United Nations. In 1980 he gave up his job to devote himself to writing. His earlier novel, The Eye with an Iron Lid, was first published in English in 1982.