Somaya Yehia Ramadan is an Egyptian academic, translator and writer. She was born in
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...
in 1951 and studied English at
Cairo University
Cairo University ( ar, جامعة القاهرة, Jāmi‘a al-Qāhira), also known as the Egyptian University from 1908 to 1940, and King Fuad I University and Fu'ād al-Awwal University from 1940 to 1952, is Egypt's premier public university ...
. Subsequently, she obtained a PhD in English from Trinity College, Dublin in 1983. She is a convert from Islam to the
Baháʼí Faith
The Baháʼí Faith is a religion founded in the 19th century that teaches the essential worth of all religions and the unity of all people. Established by Baháʼu'lláh in the 19th century, it initially developed in Iran and parts of the ...
.
Ramadan's first two books were short story collections: ''Khashab wa Nohass'' (''Brass and Wood'', 1995) and ''Manazel el-Kamar'' (''Phases of the Moon'', 1999). Her first novel ''Awraq Al-Nargis'' (''Leaves of Narcissus'') was published to great acclaim in 2001 and won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal. It was then translated into English by
Marilyn Booth
Marilyn Louise Booth (born 24 February 1955) is an author, scholar and translator of Arabic literature. Since 2015, she has been the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Oxford and ...
and is available from the
AUC Press
The American University in Cairo Press (AUCP, AUC Press) is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East.
The largest translator of Arabic literature in the world, AUC Press has a reputation for carefully selecting and translating t ...
.
Ramadan has also worked extensively as a translator. Among her notable translations is
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
's ''
A Room of One's Own
''A Room of One's Own'' is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf, first published in September 1929. The work is based on two lectures Woolf delivered in October 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, women's colleges at the University of C ...
.'' She is a founding member of the Women and Memory Forum, a non-profit organisation, and teaches English and Translation at the National Academy of Arts in Cairo.
Biography
Ramadan was born in 1951 in
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...
, Egypt. In 2001, her novel ''Leaves of Narcissus'' won the