To complement the novels in the Arab Women Writers series, this is a collection of autobiographical writings by 13 leading Arab women authors. Through these testimonies, the women describe their experiences and expose the often difficult conditions under which their narratives were written. Patterns running throughout include experiences of confinement, subjugation, the struggle for education and the eventual use of writing as an escape. They speak of their own reasons for writing, of how experiences in family life, politics, exile and even imprisonment have affected them and their work, and of how their motivation has been both tested and reinforced by various setbacks and the struggle for recognition.