Ahdaf Soueif

Ahdaf Soueif ( _ar. أهداف سويف) (born March 23 1950) is an Egyptian short story writer, novelist and political and cultural commentator.

Soueif was born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England. She studied for a PhD in linguistics at the University of Lancaster. Her novel "The Map of Love" (1999) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and subsequently translated into 16 languages. Soueif writes primarily in English, but her Arabic-speaking readers say they can hear the Arabic through the English. Along with in-depth and sensitive readings of Egyptian history and politics, Soueif also writes about Palestinians in her fiction and non-fiction. A shorter version of "Under the Gun: A Palestinian Journey" was originally published in "The Guardian" and then printed in full in Soueif's recent collection of essays, "Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground" (2004). Soueif has also translated Mourid Barghouti's "I Saw Ramallah" (with a foreword by Edward Said) from Arabic into English.

In 2007, Soueif was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter initiated by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism and the South West Asian, North African Bay Area Queers (SWANABAQ) and calling on the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival "to honor calls for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions, by discontinuing Israeli consulate sponsorship of the LGBT film festival and not cosponsoring events with the Israeli consulate." [http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=1838] [http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6966.shtml]

In 2008 she initiated the first Palestine Festival of Literature

Bibliography

*"Aisha" London: Bloomsbury, 1983.
*"In the Eye of the Sun" NY: Random House, 1992.
*"Sandpiper" London: Bloomsbury, 1996.
*"The Map of Love" London: Bloomsbury, 1999.
*"Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground" NY: Anchor Books, 2004.
*trans. of "I Saw Ramallah" by Mourid Barghouti. NY: Anchor Books, 2003.

Events

* Palestine Festival of Literature May 2008

Prizes and awards

* 1983 Guardian Fiction Prize (shortlist) "Aisha"

* 1996 Cairo International Book Fair Best Collection of Short Stories "Sandpiper"

* 1999 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist) "The Map of Love"

External links

* [http://www.ahdafsoueif.com Official website]
*Guardian article, 22 May 2008, "The Palestine literature festival was an enlightening experience - but not always for the right reasons", [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/22/israelandthepalestinians]