Hanan al-Shaykh

Anna Ball (The Nottingham Trent University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 6.1.3: Middle-Eastern Arabic Writing and Culture: Modern and Contemporary.
Vol. editors: Ziad Elmarsafy (King's College London), Joseph Farag (University of Minnesota), Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Nora Parr (SOAS, University of London), Rita Sakr (Maynooth University), Anastasia Valassopoulos (University of Manchester)

Dates

Born 12 Nov 1945
Activity 1970-ongoing

Places

Born in Lebanon
Active in Lebanon; United Kingdom

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Playwright / Dramatist
Story-writer

Resources

Hanan Al-Shaykh is a novelist, short story writer, playwright and journalist of Lebanese descent who currently lives and writes in London. She has come to be known as one of the leading contemporary female writers of Arabic literature, and her work is highly regarded in both the Arab and the Western worlds. Her novels and short stories have been translated into many languages. Al-Shaykh’s writing is renowned for its strident confrontations of topics that are often considered taboo in the Arab world. In particular, her novel The Story of Zahra (1980; trans. 1994) caused outcry in many Muslim countries for its unflinching portrayal of female sexuality, sexual violence and abortion, but it went on to win significant …

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1621 words

Citation: Ball, Anna. "Hanan al-Shaykh". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 November 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12629, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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