Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo, with family roots in Alexandria and Upper Egypt, and spent several childhood years in London. She completed her secondary schooling in Cairo and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Cairo University, then completed a PhD in Linguistics at Lancaster University, UK, in the late 1970s: a fictionalized version of this period features in her first novel,
In the Eye of the Sun(1992). Her second novel,
The Map of Love(1999), reached the Man Booker shortlist: poised between popular genre fiction and literature, it has been translated into more than 20 languages, with international sales to date in excess of a million copies. Soueif has published two collections of short stories,
Aisha(1983) and
Sandpiper(1996), a combined selection of…
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Citation: Moore, Lindsey. "Ahdaf Soueif". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 April 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12630, accessed 21 November 2024.]
