Points of the Compass

About

This collection of short stories, recipient of a 1994 University of Arkansas Press Award for Arabic Literature in Translation, presents one of Egypt’s most innovative contemporary fiction writers. In her first collection published in English, Sahar Tawfiq explores the consciousnesses of young women alienated from their surroundings in today’s rapidly changing Egyptian society. In questioning the place of long-powerful myths and beliefs, she is in the forefront of writers examining the legacy of the Pharaohs as it permeates current Egyptian identities and practices, especially in the countryside. Her characters are shaped by journeys through modern social and economic trials and the ageless troubles of the human spirit and heart.

Author/Translator

Sahar Tawfiq was born in Cairo in . She first published a story in 1972, has since been published in many literary journals through out the Arabic-speaking world, and has had a short-story collection published. A schoolteacher in the government school system, she recently returned to Egypt after teaching in a Saudi Arabian village. The author states that she is “an Egyptian who has love for all human beings, a modern who is deeply affected by the past, fond of nature in all its forms, offering these stories as the children of my soul.” This collection spans her career to date.

Marilyn Booth is an independent scholar and translator living in Urbana, Illinois, where she is also affiliated with the comparative literature program at the University of Illinois. A graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe College and Oxford University, she has previously published three book-length translations, a monograph, and numerous articles on writers in Egypt.