Hanan al-Shaykh
b. 1945
Hanan al-Shaykh was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019.
Hanan al-Shaykh is one of the Arab world’s most acclaimed writers. She is the author of the short story collection I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops and her novels include The Story of Zahra, Women of Sand and Myrrh, Beirut Blues, Only in London, which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and The Locust and the Bird, a memoir of her mother’s life, and One Thousand and One Nights, her acclaimed reimagining of Arabic folktales. Most recently she published her novel The Occasional Virgin.
Her work has been translated into 28 languages. She lives in London.
