Marilyn Booth

Last updated

Marilyn Louise Booth (born 24 February 1955) is an author, scholar and translator of Arabic literature. [1] Since 2015, she has been the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. [2] [3]

Contents

Biography

Booth graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1978, and was the first female winner of the Wendell Scholarship. She obtained a D.Phil. in Arabic literature and Middle Eastern history from St Antony's College, Oxford in 1985. She received a Marshall Fellowship for her doctoral studies at Oxford. [4] She has taught at Brown University, American University in Cairo, and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She was director of the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at UIUC. She currently holds the Iraq Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Booth has written three books (including one on the Egyptian nationalist poet Bayram al-Tunisi) as well as numerous scholarly papers and book chapters. She has also translated numerous works of Arabic literature into English. Her work has appeared in Banipal and Words Without Borders. She is a past winner of the Arkansas Arabic Translation Award and runner-up for the Banipal Prize, and her translation of Celestial Bodies by Jokha al-Harthi won the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. [5] She also served as a judge for the Banipal Prize in 2008 and 2009.

Girls of Riyadh dispute

Booth was the original translator of Rajaa Alsanea's bestseller Girls of Riyadh . However, in a letter to the Times Literary Supplement in September 2007, she asserted that the author Alsanea and the publishers Penguin had interfered with her initial translation, resulting in a final version that was "inferior and infelicitous". [6] Booth also wrote about this incident in a scholarly article titled "Translator v. author" published in a 2008 issue of Translation Studies . [7]

Selected works

Author

Translator

See also

Related Research Articles

Hoda Barakat is a Lebanese novelist. She lived most of her early life in Beirut before moving to Paris, where she now resides. She has published six novels, two plays, a book of short stories, and a book of memoirs. Her works are originally written in Arabic and have been translated into English, Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Romanian, Dutch, and Greek.

Banipal is an independent literary magazine dedicated to the promotion of contemporary Arab literature through translations in English. It was founded in London in 1998 by Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon. The magazine is published three times a year. Since its inception, it has published works and interviews of numerous Arab authors and poets, many of them translated for the first time into English. It is also co-sponsor of the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.

<i>Girls of Riyadh</i>

Girls of Riyadh, or Banat al-Riyadh, is a novel by Rajaa Alsanea. The book, written in the form of e-mails, recounts the personal lives of four young Saudi girls, Lamees, Michelle, Gamrah, and Sadeem.

Rajaa al-Sanea is a Saudi Arabian writer who became famous through her novel Girls of Riyadh. The book was first published in Lebanon in 2005 and in English in 2007. Al-Sanea grew up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the daughter of a family of doctors. As of 2014, she is currently an assistant professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Egyptian literature</span> Literature produced in Egypt, from ancient Egypt to contemporary times

Egyptian literature traces its beginnings to ancient Egypt and is some of the earliest known literature. Ancient Egyptians were the first to develop written literature, as inscriptions or in collections of papyrus, precursors to the modern book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Prize for Arabic Fiction</span> Award

The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), also known as "the Arabic Booker", is regarded as the most prestigious and important literary prize in the Arab world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American University in Cairo Press</span> Academic publisher

The American University in Cairo Press is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nawal El Saadawi</span> Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist (1931–2021)

Nawal Elsaadawi was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician. She wrote numerous books on the subject of women in Islam, focusing on the practice of female genital mutilation in her society. She was described as "the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World", and as "Egypt's most radical woman".

The Banipal Prize, whose full name is the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, is an annual prize awarded to a translator for the published English translation of a full-length literary work in the Arabic language. The prize was inaugurated in 2006 by the literary magazine Banipal which promotes the diffusion of contemporary Arabic literature through English translations and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. It is administered by the Society of Authors in the UK, and the prize money is sponsored by Omar Saif Ghobash and his family in memory of Ghobash's late father Saif Ghobash. As of 2009, the prize money amounted to £3000.

Humphrey T. Davies was a British translator of Arabic fiction, historical and classical texts. Born in Great Britain, he studied Arabic in college and graduate school. He worked for decades in the Arab world and was based in Cairo from the late 20th century to 2021. He translated at least 18 Arabic works into English, including contemporary literature. He is a two-time winner of the Banipal Prize.

William Maynard Hutchins is an American academic, author and translator of contemporary Arabic literature. He was formerly a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

Hamdi Abu Golayyel was an Egyptian writer. The author of several novels and collections of short stories, he is known as one of the new voices in Egyptian fiction. Among other awards, he won the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation in 2022. The literary magazine ArabLit called him a "chronicler of the lives of Egypt’s marginalized and working-class."

Sahar Tawfiq is an Egyptian novelist, short story writer and translator. Born and raised in Cairo, she studied Arabic language and literature at Al-Azhar University. She has worked as a teacher and educationist in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Paula Haydar is an American academic and translator. She has a PhD in Comparative literature and an MFA in Literary translation. She won an Arkansas Arabic Translation Prize for her translation of Elias Khoury's The Kingdom of Strangers. Her work has appeared in Banipal magazine and she has translated the literary work of Jabbour Douaihy, Rachid Al-Daif and others.

Catherine Cobham is a scholar and translator of Arabic literature.

Farouk Abdel Wahab Mustafa, pen name Farouk Abdel Wahab, was an Egyptian academic and translator based in the USA. He was born in Tanta and studied at the University of Cairo. He received a BA degree in 1962 and an MA in English literature in 1969.

Paul Starkey is a British scholar and translator of Arabic literature.

Nariman Youssef is an Egyptian translator. She obtained a BSc in computer science from the American University in Cairo before moving to the UK for graduate studies. She has master's degrees from Birkbeck College and the University of Edinburgh, and is currently a doctoral candidate at Manchester University. She is affiliated with CASAW.

Jokha Alharthi, also spelt al-Harthi, is an Omani writer and academic, known for winning the Man Booker International Prize in 2019 for her novel Sayyidat al-Qamar, published in English under the title Celestial Bodies. Alharthi is the first Arab author to win the Man Booker International Prize. She has written four novels in Arabic, two of which have been translated into English.

Amira Nowaira is an Egyptian academic, translator, columnist and author. She gained her doctorate in English literature from Birmingham University. She has served as chair of the English department at Alexandria University, and is currently a professor there. She has published a number scholarly books and journal articles. More recently, she has contributed journalistic pieces to The Guardian. Apart from her own books, Nowaira has also done translations, both from Arabic to English and from English to Arabic.

References

  1. ↑ "Profile on Banipal website". Banipal.co.uk. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
  2. ↑ "Marilyn Booth". Faculty of Oriental Studies. University of Oxford. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  3. ↑ "Professor Marilyn Booth". Magdalen College. University of Oxford. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  4. ↑ "Profile on Edinburgh University website". Imes.ed.ac.uk. 20 May 2010. Archived from the original on 30 July 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
  5. ↑ "Man Booker International Prize 2019 shortlist announced | The Booker Prizes". thebookerprizes.com. Retrieved 8 June 2021.
  6. ↑ Booth, Marilyn. "Letters to the Editor, 'Girls of Riyadh'", The Times Literary Supplement, 2007-09-27.
  7. ↑ Booth, Marilyn (29 May 2008). "Translator v. author (2007)". Translation Studies. 1 (2): 197–211. doi: 10.1080/14781700802113523 .
  8. ↑ "Banipal Trust for Arab Literature - The Banipal Translation Prize - The 2021 Award". www.banipaltrust.org.uk. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.