| writers |
Abdallah, Jahia Taher (1938-1981)Jahia Taher Abdullah was born in 1938 in Karnak. He studied agriculture and worked for a short period in Karnak at the Ministry of Agriculture. In 1959, he met the poets Amal Donkul and Abdarrachman al Abudi. Two years later he wrote his first short story and, in 1970, a collection of his stories was published. In Cairo, he soon became known for the virtuoso oral performance of his stories. He placed great value on storytelling in order to reach the majority of the Egyptian people who were illiterate. His stories are about the Egyptian people, those still untouched by western influence. In 1981, Abdallah died in a car accident. Al-Aswany, AlaaAlaa Al-Aswany has been the best selling author in the Arab World since 2003.Trained as a dentist in Egypt and Chicago, Al Aswany has contributed numerous articles to Egyptian newspapers on literature, politics and social issues. His second novel, The Yacoubian Building is about Egyptian society. The novel was adapted into a film (2006) and a television series (2007) of the same name. Reading the novel is a rich and sensory experience. The book has been widely read in Egypt and throughout the Middle East and has been translated into several languages. Al Aswany lives in Cairo in Garden City, an elegant Cairo neighbourhood, were he combines his decades-long practice of dentistry with a successful literary career. He holds a weekly public salon in Cairo where literature, art and politics are discussed. Al Aswany is increasingly critical of the Mubarak government, which has held power non-stop for decades. Selected works
Al Ghitani, GamalGamal Al Ghitani was born in Guhaina, a village in Upper Egypt. His parents soon moved to the capital where he grew up in Cairo’s mesmerizing old town. After school, the young Gamal visited Sheik Tihama, who sold books in front of Al Azhar Mosque. For little money, he found books to read, mostly historical works from Arab authors from the 13th to the19th century, folk tales and the stories of 1001 nights. Later he studied handcrafts and worked for a few years as a carpet designer in Cairo. In 1968 he started his career as journalist, and became chief editor of the feuilleton Al Ahbar and, since 1993, of a literary and cultural magazine. Since the 1960s he has published novels and essays, which have won numerous prizes. His stories are historical and political and often deal with the effect of the temptations of modernity on the traditional lives of the poorer classes. Selected works
Bakr, SalwaSalwa Bakr has become one of Egypt’s most respected novelists and short story writers. She was born in 1949 into a lower-middle class family in Matariyya. The stories and rituals of her widowed and unschooled mother sparked her interest as did the views on the world and speech styles of the poor and uneducated women who inhabit much of her fiction. The daughter of a railway worker took a degree in business management and literary criticism in 1972 and 1976 before embarking on a career in journalism. She began writing in the mid 1970s and her work has been met with much critical acclaim. Bakr lived for several years in Cyprus, where she worked as a film critic for a number of Arabic-language publications, before returning to Egypt in 1986, where she has since concentrated on her creative writing. Today she lives with her husband and two children in Cairo and writes mostly about women in the lowest strata of society who suffer from a double discrimination. Repression in all areas of Egyptian life and in particular the political sphere is perhaps Bakr’s greatest concern. However she maintains that both men and women can be liberated through the contributions of women’s writings. Selected works
Rifaat, Alifa (1930-1996)Alifa Rifaat is probably one of the most fascinating writers in Egypt. Reviewers overwhelmingly praise her for the sense of raw emotion and authenticity in her writing. Her stories are deeply moving. They are of a rare sensibility, sensuality and beauty and seem to open doors to different worlds. At the same time they are open and cruel when they talk about the discrimination, humiliation and mutilation of women in Egyptian society. Alifa Rifaat was born1930 in Cairo into a very traditional family, where her father was the undisputed patriarch. Some of her family were landowners in a village in Province Sharquia and belonged to the upper class during the second half of the last century. During her visits there, she experienced the sense of past glory but also the chasm between rich and poor. She attended a school for home economics in Cairo until 1948, and in 1951 was obliged to agree to an arranged marriage. The marriage failed and she remarried a policeman from her family. When her first essay was published in a magazine, he forced her to decide between him and writing. She continued to write for several years under a pseudonym until this was discovered and she had to stop completely for the sake of her three children. Only after the death of her husband in 1979 she could express herself freely. Selected works
Al Tahawi, MiralMiral Al Tahawi was born into a Beduin family in Geziret Saoud in Sharqia. In 1991, she earned her BA in Literature (Arabic Language Studies) at Zagazig University and is currently Assistant Professor in the department of Literature and Criticism at Cairo University and is working on her doctorate. With her various academic studies, she has participated at numerous international conferences and published articles in magazines and cultural journals. Her works have been discussed by numerous critics and artists in Egypt and other Arab countries and Europe. In 2000 she won the country’s encouragement prize for her novel al-bazengana al-zarkaa (The Blue Eggplant). This made her the first female Egyptian novelist to win this prize. Her two novels have been discussed at various universities and institutes across Egypt and Arab countries as well as in Arabic language departments at many European and American universities. Her literary style is the subject of several research papers (master theses and doctorate degrees). Her academic research includes an extended survey of the forms of Bedouin folklore, which has been published (Folklore Art Magazine). Selected works
Idris, Jussuf (1927- 1991)Born 1927 in Bairum, Jussuf Idris is known as the father of Egyptian short stories. After studying medicine, he worked as a doctor and at the same time started to write short stories. In the mid 1960s he gave up his medical profession and devoted his time to writing. His work includes essays, novels and theatre plays. Jussuf Idris died in 1991 in Cairo.
El Saadawi, NawalNawal El Saadawi was born in 1931 in Kafr Tahla (Lower Egypt) and is a famous novelist, essayist and physician. Her central theme is the oppression of women. Her early stories were published in newspapers and magazines. In 1958 she made her debut as a novelist with Memoirs of a Woman Doctor, a partly autobiographical work. In the 1970s she began to openly criticize women’s oppression in different forms and touch on taboo issues like female circumcision, abortion, sexuality and child abuse. Saadawi’s stories combine fiction with nonfictional elements, her own knowledge of medical science, autobiographical details, and a depiction of social ills. Saadawi has denounced the patriarchy of all three great Near Eastern religions, and argues the theory that Ancient Egypt was originally matriarchal. Nawal El Saadawi has received several awards although her books have been censored and banned in Egypt. Contrary to common practice, her parents (her father was a civil servant, her mother from an upper-class family) sent all nine children, not only the boys, to school. Nevertheless, her traditional mother insisted on Saadawi’s circumcision at the age of 6. After school, El Saadawi entered medical school, was educated at the University of Cairo and studied later at Columbia University, New York. After graduating, she worked as a physician at the university and at the Rural Health Center in Tahla. She became Director General of Public Health Education in the Ministry of Health. In 1972 she was dismissed from this post for publishing Al-mar’a wa-al-jins, which dealt with sex, religion, and the trauma of female clitoridectomy – all taboo subjects in the country. In 1981, Saadawi criticized President Sadat’s one-party rule, after which she was imprisoned for two months in Qanatir Women’s Prison. She was familiar with the prison because she had done research among its inmates in the 1970s. She established the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association, which was banned in 1991. When her name appeared on a fundamentalist death list, she fled with her husband to the United States, where she taught at Duke University and Washington State University in Seattle. In 1996 she returned to Egypt. Selected works
Mahfous, Naguib (1911- 2006)Naguib Mahfous was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. Mahfous wrote some 40 novels and short stories, 30 screenplays, and many plays. Most of Mahfous’ early works are historical novels. His central achievement in the 1950s was The Cairo Trilogy, a monumental work of 1,500 pages. Mahfous set the story in the parts of Cairo where he grew up. It depicts the life of a patriarch and his family over three generations from World War One to the 1950s. Later, Mahfous shifted his interest from the past to the present. His stories, written in florid classical Arabic, are almost always set in the heavily populated urban quarters of Cairo, where his characters, mostly ordinary people, try to cope with the modernization of society and the temptations of Western values. In Egypt he was widely considered a spokesperson not only for Egypt but also for other non-western cultures. Naguib Mahfous was born in Cairo. The family lived in two baladi districts of the town, first in Al Jamaliyyah, and from 1924 in Al Abbasiya. Both provided the backdrop for many of the author’s writings. Mahfous’ father was a civil servant, the family religious Muslims. Mahfous read extensively as a child. His mother often took him to museums. He was interested in Egyptian history, which later became a major theme in many of his books. Mahfous entered Cairo University, where he studied philosophy, graduating in 1934. By 1936 he decided to become a professional writer. Mahfous worked as a journalist, and before turning to the novel wrote articles and short stories, 80 of which were published in magazines. Mahfous’ first collection of stories appeared in 1938. In 1939 he entered government bureaucracy, where he was employed for the next 35 years. From 1939 until 1954, he was a civil servant at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and was then appointed director of the Foundation for Support of the Cinema, the state cinema organization. From 1969-71 he was a consultant for cinema affairs to the Ministry of Culture. After marrying in 1954, he moved from the family house in Al Abbasiya to an apartment overlooking the Nile in Jiza. In his old age, Mahfous suffered health problems, became nearly blind and had difficulties holding a pen. He also had to abandon his daily habit of meeting his friends at coffeehouses. Selected works
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