by Hanan al-Shaykh

Hanan al-Shaykh, one of the best-known Arab writers in the English-speaking world, was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1945. Growing up in Ras al-Naba, a conservative and predominantly Shi`ite Muslim neighborhood in the Lebanese capital, she experienced many restrictions both at home and in the Amiliah Muslim girls’ primary school. After transferring to the progressive Ahliyah School, she made friends with several girls who later also rose to prominence. In 1963 al-Shaykh traveled to Egypt, where she studied for three years at the American College for Girls in Cairo. During her stay in the Egyptian capital, she met with the popular novelist Ihsan Abd al-Qaddus, who encouraged her to write her first novel, Suicide of a Dead Man, which was published in 1967. Upon her return to Beirut, al-Shaykh became a full-time journalist, working first for al-Hasna, a women’s magazine...