Ahdaf Soueif – författare

This is a love story, a story about growing up, a story about what its like to be a women (East and West), a story about the history of the post-imperial Middle East during the last 30 years or so, perplexed and bloody years, and a story about home.

In 1900 Lady Anna Winterbourne travels to Egypt where she falls in love with Sharif, and Egyptian Nationalist utterly committed to his country's cause. A hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, an American divorcee and a descendant of Anna and Sharif, goes to Egypt, taking with her an old family trunk, inside which are found notebooks and journals which reveal Anna and Sharif's secret.

"Globalisation is happening. It is driven by economics, ideology and communications. But does this have to entail the annexation of chunks of the world by the Great Power of any given moment? Surely that is the path to constant conflict, to grief and misery. There is another way: to inhabit and broaden the common ground. This is the ground where everybody is welcome, the ground we need to defend and to expand. It is in Mezzaterra that every responsible person on this planet now needs to pitch their tent. This is the ground from which this book is calling." Ahdaf Soueif is one of the finest commentators of our time. Her clear-eyed reporting is syndicated throughout the world, and these essays, written between 1981 and the present, are collected here for the first time. They are the direct result of Soueif's own circumstances of being, as she puts it, "like hundreds of thousands of others: people with an Arab or a Muslim background doing daily double-takes when faced with their reflection in a western mirror".From visiting Palestine and entering the Noble Sanctuary for the first time, to interpretations of women who choose to wear the veil, and to post-September 11th commentary, these selected essays are always perceptive, fearless, intelligent and necessary.

In these selected stories from her collections "Aisha" and "Sandpiper", Ahdaf Soueif writes about love and displacement in prose that is delicately nuanced and acutely observed. These are achingly lyrical stories, resonant and richly woven. But they always retain an edginess as they explore areas of tension - where women and men are ensnared by cultural and social mores and prescribed notions of 'love', where the place you are is not the place you want to be. She delivers her characters with infinite tenderness and compassion as they inhabit a world of lost opportunities, unfulfilled love and remembrance of times past.

_____________________An intimate telling of the wild days of the 2011 Egyptian RevolutionAhdaf Soueif was born and brought up in Cairo. When the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 erupted on January 25th, she, along with thousands of others, called Tahrir Square home for eighteen days. She reported for the world's media and did, like everyone else, whatever she could.Cairo tells the story of the Egyptian Revolution, of how on the 28th of January when The People took the Square and torched the headquarters of the hated ruling National Democratic Party, The (same) People formed a human chain to protect the Antiquities Museum and demanded an official handover to the military; it tells how, on Wednesday, February 2nd, as The People defended themselves against the invading thug militias and fought pitched battles at the entrance to the Square in the shadow of the Antiquities Museum, The (same) People at the centre of the square debated political structures and laughed at stand-up comics and distributed sandwiches and water.Through a map of stories drawn from private history and public record Soueif charts a story of the Revolution that is both intimately hers and publicly Egyptian._____________________'Captures the intoxicating romance of the weeks when anything seemed possible. Souief writes with verve and passion, offering the authentic voice of the liberal Egyptian who risked everything because she wanted her country to have freedom and democracy' TELEGRAPH'Should serve as a heartening reminder of what people are capable of achieving when united and courageous' ECONOMIST‘Ahdaf Soueif is extraordinary' EDWARD SAID, author of Orientialism‘A convincing and skilful writer' SUNDAY TIMES'Highly unusual and richly impressive' GUARDIAN

________________'This anthology will help turn your intellectual understanding of oppression into an emotional one' - New Statesman'Thanks for being who you are and for giving us such exposure to wonderful people. Palestine is proud of you' - Suad Amiry________________The Palestine Festival of Literature was established in 2008. Bringing together writers from all corners of the globe, it aims to help Palestinians break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen their artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, ‘the power of culture over the culture of power’.Celebrating the tenth anniversary of PalFest, This Is Not a Border is a collection of essays, poems and stories from some of the world’s most distinguished artists, responding to their experiences at this unique festival. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and courage in the most desperate of situations.Contributors: Susan Abulhawa, Suad Amiry, Victoria Brittain, Jehan Bseiso, Teju Cole, Molly Crabapple, Selma Dabbagh, Mahmoud Darwish, Najwan Darwish, Geoff Dyer, Yasmin El-Rifae, Adam Foulds, Ru Freeman, Omar Robert Hamilton, Suheir Hammad, Nathalie Handal, Mohammed Hanif, Jeremy Harding, Rachel Holmes, John Horner, Remi Kanazi, Brigid Keenan, Mercedes Kemp, Omar El-Khairy, Nancy Kricorian, Sabrina Mahfouz, Jamal Mahjoub, Henning Mankell, Claire Messud, China Miéville, Pankaj Mishra, Deborah Moggach, Muiz, Maath Musleh, Michael Palin, Ed Pavlic, Atef Abu Saif, Kamila Shamsie, Raja Shehadeh, Gillian Slovo, Ahdaf Soueif, Linda Spalding, Will Sutcliffe, Alice WalkerWith messages from China Achebe, Michael Ondaatje and J. M. Coetzee________________'Every literary act, whether it is a great epic poem or an honest piece of journalism or a simple nonsense tale for children is a blow against the forces of stupidity and ignorance and darkness … The Palestine Festival of Literature exists to do just that – and I salute it for its work. Not only this year but for as long as it is necessary' - Philip Pullman

On October 7th 2001, US-led forces invaded Afghanistan, marking the start of George Bush and Tony Blair's "War on Terror." Six years on, where have the policies of Bush and Blair left us? Bringing together some of the finest contemporary writers, this wide-ranging anthology, from reportage and "faction" to fiction, explores the impact of this "long war" throughout the world, from Palestine to Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the curtailment of civil liberties and manipulation of public opinion.Published in conjunction with Stop the War coalition and United for Peace and Justice, War With No End provides an urgent, necessary reflection on the causes and consequences of the ideological War on Terror.

Ahdaf Soueif har skrivit bestsellern The Map of Love (som kvalificerade sig till slutomgången för Bookerpriset 1999 och översatts till över tjugo språk; på svenska ”Kärlekens väv”, Alhambra 2002) liksom In the Eye of the Sun (”I solens öga”, Alhambra 2004) och en novellsamling, I Think of You. Hon kommenterar också politik och kultur och har av London Review of Books beskrivits som ”en politisk analytiker och kommentator av bästa slag”, vars klarögda rapportering och analys samtidigt publiceras på olika håll världen runt. En samling av hennes essäer, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground, utgavs 2004. Samma år översatte hon Mourad Barghoutis I Saw Ramallah (från arabiska till engelska). Hon medverkar regelbundet i The Guardian och har en veckospalt i egyptiska al-Shurouq. 2007 grundade hon Engaged Events, en brittiskbaserad stiftelse. Dess första projekt var den Palestinska litteraturfestivalen (PalFest), som hålls i Jerusalem, Betlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin och Hebron.

"Redan med Aisha (1983) stod det klart att Ahdaf Soueif var en berättartalang att räkna med. Flera romaner sedan dess, bl.a. Kärlekens väv (2002), bekräftade omdömet. I solens öga, som kom ut för mer än 10 år sedan, är nu äntligen översatt. ... "I solens öga" handlar om kulturskillnader, könsrelationer och egyptisk politik de senaste 30 åren. Författaren hanterar skickligt ett digert persongalleri, olika tidsplan och skilda berättarperspektiv." Ulla Siljeholm, BTJ