Ahdaf Soueif (Arabic: أهداف سويف; born 23 March 1950) is an Egyptian novelist and political and cultural commentator.
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Ahdaf Soueif | |
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أهداف سويف | |
Born | (1950-03-23) 23 March 1950 (age 72) Cairo, Egypt |
Notable work | The Map of Love (1999) |
Spouse | Ian Hamilton |
Children | 2 |
Relatives | Laila Soueif (sister) Alaa Abd El-Fattah (nephew) Mona Seif (niece) Sanaa Seif (niece) |
Website | www |
Soueif was born in Cairo, where she lives, and was educated in Egypt and England. She studied for a PhD in linguistics at the University of Lancaster, completing the degree in 1979.[1][2] Her sister is the human and women's rights activist and mathematician Laila Soueif.[3]
Her debut novel, In the Eye of the Sun (1993), set in Egypt and England, recounts the maturing of Asya, a beautiful Egyptian woman who, by her own admission, "feels more comfortable with art than with life." Soueif's second novel, The Map of Love (1999), was shortlisted for the Booker Prize,[4] has been translated into 21 languages and sold more than a million copies.[5] She has also published two works of short stories, Aisha (1983) and Sandpiper (1996) – a selection from which was combined in the collection I Think Of You in 2007, and Stories Of Ourselves in 2010.
Soueif writes primarily in English,[1] but her Arabic-speaking readers say they can hear the Arabic through the English.[6] She translated Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah (with a foreword by Edward Said) from Arabic into English.
Along with her 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) and she wrote the introduction to the NYRB's reprint of Jean Genet's Prisoner of Love.[citation needed]
In 2008 she initiated the first Palestine Festival of Literature,[7] of which she is the Founding Chair.[8]
Soueif is also a cultural and political commentator for The Guardian newspaper, and she has reported on the Egyptian revolution.[9] In January 2012, she published Cairo: My City, Our Revolution – a personal account of the first year of the Egyptian revolution. She initially supported the overthrow of democracy and its replacement with the government of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.[10] Her sister Laila Soueif, and Laila's children, Alaa Abd El-Fatah and Mona Seif, are also activists.[11]
She was married to Ian Hamilton,[12] with whom she had two sons: Omar Robert Hamilton and Ismail Richard Hamilton.[13]
She was appointed a trustee of the British Museum in 2012 and re-appointed for a further four years in 2016.[14] However she resigned in 2019 complaining about BP's sponsorship, the reluctance to re-hire workers transferred to Carillion and lack of engagement with repatriating artworks.[15]
In June 2013, Soueif and numerous other celebrities appeared in a video showing support for Chelsea Manning.[16][17]
In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, Soueif signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."[18][19]
In 2020, Soueif was arrested for demanding the release of political prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic in Egypt.[20]
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In a review of Egyptian novelists, Harper's Magazine included Soueif in a shortlist of "the country's most talented writers."[21] She has also been the recipient of several literary awards:
Marta Cariello: "Bodies Across: Ahdaf Soueif, Fadia Faqir, Diana Abu Jaber" in Al Maleh, Layla (ed.), Arab Voices in Diaspora. Critical Perspectives on Anglophone Arab Literature. Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2009, Hb: ISBN 978-90-420-2718-3
Chakravorty, Mrinalini. "To Undo What the North Has Done: Fragments of a Nation and Arab Collectivism in the Fiction of Ahdaf Soueif." In Arab Women's Lives Retold: Exploring Identity Through Writing, edited by Nawar Al-Hassan Golley, 129–154. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007. ISBN 9780815631477
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