Ahdaf Soueif Biography

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Dictionary of Literary Biography on Ahdaf Soueif

In addition to writing novels and short stories published in both English and Arabic, the Anglo-Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif is a translator of Arabic writing into English, and she has engaged in the promotion and mediation of Arab culture in association with several cultural organizations. She is a regular contributor to literary magazines and newspapers as well as appearing on radio and television in England, the United States, and the Arab world. Soueif describes her time as being divided between London and Cairo, thus accenting the cultural dualities that have been formative in the creation of her fiction. Although Soueif is a British citizen and thus a British novelist, Egypt figures large in her work, and she draws upon both Arabic and English literary traditions.

In comparison to the introduction of the English language into India and sub-Saharan Africa, its appearance in Arabic-speaking countries was desultory, to say the least. "By the middle of the nineteenth century," writes the historian Albert Hourani in his A History of the Arab Peoples (1991), "French had replaced Italian as the lingua franca of trade and the cities; knowledge of English scarcely existed in the Maghrib and was less widespread than French further east." While France, which seized a foothold in Algeria in the 1830s, was quick to promote its imperial sway over the Arab world, it was not until British armies defeated the popular revolution of Ahmad 'Urabi Pasha in 1882 and occupied Egypt that Britain came to exercise firsthand control over a large Arabic-speaking land.

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