CAIRO: Famed Egyptian author Nawal el-Saadawi, a champion of women’s rights who revolutionised discussions on gender in the Arab world, died Sunday at the age of 89, Al-Ahram newspaper said.

Saadawi died in a Cairo hospital after suffering a long illness, her family said.

A prolific author who shot to fame with widely translated novel “Women at Point Zero” (1975), Saadawi was a fierce advocate for women’s empowerment in Egypt’s deeply conservative and patriarchal society.

With more than 55 books to her name including the taboo-breaking work “Women and Sex”, she was briefly jailed by late president Anwar Sadat and also condemned by Al-Azhar, the highest Sunni Muslim authority in Egypt.

Saadawi’s outspoken brand of feminism — including campaigning against women wearing the veil, inequality in Muslim inheritance rights between men and women, polygamy and female circumcision — gained her as many critics as admirers in the Middle East.

Saadawi’s death coincides with Mother’s Day celebrations in Egypt and across the Arab world. She divorced three times and had two children.