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Prominent Egyptian Writer Ahdaf Soueif Hosted by ICB
By ICB
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It
is not an everyday happening that an Arab writer/novelist visits Palestine.
Borders and other politically-oriented reasons usually keep them away,
disconnected at least physically, from the Palestinian people. However to Ahdaf
Soueif, who is a prominent Egyptian writer/novelist, physical obstacles did not
stand in her way.
The International Center of Bethlehem had the honor of receiving Ms. Soueif as
part of its ongoing cultural activities which are organized in an attempt break
down the cultural isolation imposed on the people of Bethlehem and the whole of
Palestine. Encountering Ahdaf was an experience which enabled the audience not
only to get in direct touch with a prominent women writer/novelist who
proliferates superb articles
and novels but also to better understand what it is like to maintain one’s
identity when living in mixed cultures and civilizations.
Ahdaf Soueif who was born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England received
her Ph.D. in English Linguistics at the University of Lancaster in the UK. She
is the author of two collections of short stories, Aisha (1983) and Sandpiper
(1996), and two novels: In the Eye of the Sun (1992), about a young Egyptian
woman's life in Egypt and England, where she goes to study as a postgraduate,
set against key events in the history of modern Egypt; and The Map of Love
(1999), the story of a love affair between an Englishwoman and an Egyptian
nationalist set in Cairo in 1900, secrets uncovered by the woman's
great-granddaughter, herself in love with an Egyptian musician living in New
York.
The Map of Love was short listed for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Ahdaf Soueif
now divides her time between Egypt and the UK.
“Ahdaf Soueif is one of the most extraordinary chroniclers of sexual politics now writing” Edward Said