Necessary Sins: Mona Eltahawy and Leila Slimani

With the support of the French Embassy in Ireland

Two of the foremost commentators on feminism and the Arab and Muslim worlds come together for what promises to be an electrifying conversation.

A lifelong political commentator and activist, Mona Eltahawy’s The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls is a call to arms for feminists across the world. Unflinching in its analysis of patriarchal violence, the book is bold and uncompromising, laying out a manifesto on how women and girls are compelled away from the very qualities that comprise their most powerful tools for liberation.

In contemporary Morocco, adultery, abortion, homosexuality, sex work and all non-marital sexual relationships are criminalized, often in the same legislative language of the French colonial occupation, and women face the harshest punishments of all. Leila Slimani’s Sex and Lies confront these intimate demons with a series of vivid, often harrowing testimonies from Moroccan women, and her own passionate and sensitive analyses.

Eltahawy is a feminist author whose writing and activism have earned her plaudits across the world. Her books, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution and The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, have been translated into over a dozen languages. 

Beside her career as a journalist and commentator, Slimani is a celebrated novelist, and was the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.

This is a pre-recorded event. It will not have a Q&A.

Access options: This event will have closed captions.