Map of Love (Soueif)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 23, 1950
• Where—Cairo, Egypt
• Education—Ph.D., University of Lancaster, UK
• Awards—Finalst, Man Booker
• Currently—lives in London, England

Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo. She is the author of the bestselling novel The Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999, as well as Mezzaterra: Notes from the Common Ground and the novel In the Eye of the Sun. She also has translated from the Arabic the award-winning memoir I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti. She lives in London. (From the publisher.)

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Ahdaf Soueif is an Egyptian short story writer, novelist and political and cultural commentator. Soueif was educated in Egypt and England. She studied for a Ph.D 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."

In 2008 she initiated the first Palestine Festival of Literature. ("More" from Wikipedia.)