THE CAIRO LETTERS: AHDAF SOUEIF
Organisation: Kings Place
Time: 08 October 2011 5:00pm -
Place: Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1
Kings Place Presents
The Cairo Letters: Ahdaf Soueif
When insurrection kicked off on the streets of Cairo in January, Ahdaf Soueif was there, wholly at home in her native city. In one radio interview and press article after another, the author was asked - often apprehensively, occasionally aggressively - to 'defend the revolution'. With enthusiastic eloquence and literary aplomb, Soueif described the historic events on Tahrir Square. And as she travelled to the States, she wrote a Letter to Cairo for BBC Radio 4. Since then, Ahdaf Soueif has continued addressing her beloved city, and is now returning to London to discuss this one-sided correspondence.
Ahdaf Soueif is the author of the bestselling The Map of Love (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999 and translated into more than 20 languages), the well-loved In the Eye of the Sun and the collection of short stories, I Think of You. The London Review of Books has called her "a political analyst and commentator of the best kind" and her clear-eyed reporting and analysis is syndicated throughout the world. A collection of her essays, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground, was published in 2004, as was her translation (from Arabic into English) of Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah.
Writing in English and Arabic, concerned with both the art of fiction and the state of the world, she works at several crossroads. She has been awarded 3 honorary DLitts by British universities – having earned her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Lancaster in 1979. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature, a fellow of the Lannan Foundation for Cultural Freedom and the first recipient of the Mahmoud Darwish Award (2010). In 2007 Ms Soueif founded Engaged Events, a UK based charity. Its first project is the Palestine Festival of Literature which takes place annually in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and al-Khalil/Hebron.
Saturday 8 October 2011 | 17:00
Kings Place
90 York Way
London
N1 9AG
Tickets: £9.50 | Book Tickets | More Info