Denys Johnson-Davies was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer.
Islamic literature is literature written by Muslim people, influenced by an Islamic cultural perspective, or literature that portrays Islam. It can be written in any language and portray any country or region. It includes many literary forms including adabs, a non-fiction form of Islamic advice literature, and various fictional literary genres.
Hoda Barakat is an award-winning 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.
Ghadah Al-Samman is a Syrian writer, journalist and novelist born in Damascus in 1942 to a prominent and conservative Damascene family. Her father was Ahmed Al-Samman, a president of the Syrian University. She is remotely related to poet Nizar Qabbani. She was deeply influenced by him since her mother died at a very young age.
Reem Bassiouney is an Egyptian author, professor of sociolinguistics and Chair Department of Applied Linguistics at The American University in Cairo. In Addition, Bassiouney is the editor of the Routledge Series of Language and Identity. She is also the editor and creator of the journal Arabic Sociolinguistics Edinburgh. She has written several novels and a number of short stories and won the 2009 Sawiris Foundation Literary Prize for Young Writers for her novel Dr. Hanaa. While a substantial amount of her fiction has yet to be translated into English, her novel The Pistachio Seller was published by Syracuse University Press in 2009, and won the 2009 King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies Translation of Arabic Literature Award. Bassiouney also won Naguib Mahfouz Award from Egypt's Supreme Council for Culture in the best Egyptian novel category for her best selling novel, The Mamluk Trilogy. She was also the winner of the National Prize for Excellence in Literature of the year 2022 from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.
The American University in Cairo Press is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East.
House of the Wolf is Ezzat el Kamhawi's fourth novel and eighth book. It was first released in Arabic language in 2010 by Dar Al-Adab in Beirut.
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 has worked for decades in the Arab world and been based in Cairo since the late 20th century. He has 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.
Hartmut Fähndrich is a German scholar and translator, specialising in translation of Arabic literature into German. He was born in Tübingen and studied at the universities of Tübingen, Münster, and UCLA. He obtained an MA in comparative literature and a PhD in Islamic studies from UCLA. In 1972, he moved to Switzerland where he has lived ever since. He has taught at the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich.
Hassan Daoud is a Lebanese writer and journalist. Originally from the village of Noumairieh in southern Lebanon, he moved to Beirut as a child with his family. He studied Arabic literature at university. During the Lebanese civil war that broke out in 1975, he worked as a journalist, a profession he has pursued ever since. He served as a correspondent for al-Hayat for 11 years. At present he edits Nawafez, the cultural supplement of the Beiruti newspaper al-Mustaqbal.
Catherine Cobham is a scholar and translator of Arabic literature.
Salwa Bakr is an Egyptian critic, novelist and author. She was born in the Matariyya district in Cairo in 1949. Her father was a railway worker. She studied business at Ain Shams University, gaining a BA degree in 1972. She went on to earn another BA in literary criticism in 1976, before embarking on a career in journalism. She worked as a film and theatre critic for various Arabic newspapers and magazines. Bakr lived in Cyprus for a few years with her husband before returning to Egypt in the mid-1980s.
Anthony Calderbank is an English translator of contemporary Arabic literature. He was educated at Manchester University, where he studied Arabic and Persian. He lived in Egypt for several years in the mid-1980s, making his home in the Cairo neighbourhood of Shubra. From 1987 to 1990, he lived in England teaching Arabic at Salford University, before he finally moved back again to Egypt, taking up a teaching post at the American University in Cairo. From 2000, Calderbank worked for the British Council in Saudi Arabia, living in Khobar and Riyadh. Most recently, Calderbank became Country Director of the British Council in the new state of South Sudan.
The Project of Translation from Arabic is an academic project initiated by Dr Salma Khadra Jayyusi in 1980 in order to translate, and publish, works of Arabic literature into the English language. The stated goal of PROTA is "the dissemination of Arabic culture and literature abroad." The project had its genesis in the late 1970s when Columbia University Press invited Jayyusi to prepare a large anthology of modern Arabic literature. Funding came from the Iraqi Ministry of Information and Culture. Two major anthologies came out of this early endeavour: Modern Arabic Poetry (1987) and The Literature of Modern Arabia (1988).
Ihsan Abbas was a Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut, and was considered a premier figure of Arabic and Islamic studies in the East and West during the 20th century. The "author of over one hundred books", during his career, Abbas was renowned as one of the foremost scholars of Arabic language and literature and was a respected literary critic. Upon his death, Abbas was eulogized by University College London historian Lawrence Conrad as a custodian of Arabic heritage and culture, and a figure whose scholarship had dominated the Middle East's intellectual and cultural life for decades.
Huzama Habayeb is a Palestinian novelist, storyteller, columnist, translator, and poet who has won multiple awards such as Mahmoud Seif Eddin ِAl-Erani Award for Short Stories, Jerusalem Festival of Youth Innovation in Short Stories, and Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. Upon graduating from Kuwait University in 1987 with a BA. degree in English language and Literature, she pursued careers in journalism, teaching, and translation before she eventually started to write professionally as a published author. She is a member of both the Jordanian Writers Association and the Arab Writers Federation.
Samia Mehrez is an Egyptian professor of contemporary literature, literary critic, and researcher, who was born on 1 January 1955. She is President of the Center for Translation Studies at the American University in Cairo. Mehrez has played a major role in publishing articles on translation, contemporary Arab literature, post-colonial studies and various cultural topics.
