Open Door

The Open Door is a landmark of women's writing in Arabic; published in 1960 it was very bold for its time in exploring a middle-class Egyptian girl's coming of age, in the context of the Egyptian nationalist movement preceding the 1952 revolution. The novel traces the pressures on young women and men of that time and class as they seek to free themselves of family control and social expectations.

Young Layla and her brother become involved in the student activism of the 1940s and early 1950s and in the popular resistance to continued imperialist rule; the story culminates when Adb Al Nasser's nationalization of the canal led to a British, French, and Israeli invasion. Not only daring in her themes, Al Zayyat was also bold in her use of colloquial Arabic, and the novel contains some of the liveliest dialogue in modern Arabic literature.