New Release: 13th edition of Radwa Ashour's Woman from Tantoura
Ahram Online, , Wednesday 27 May 2020
The novel takes place in the village of Tantoura in Palestine and tells the story of a displaced family that lived between 1947 and 2000


Dar El-Shorouk released the 13th edition of the late Egyptian writer Radwa Ahsour's novel Al-Tantouriya (The Woman from Tantoura).



Ashour, who died in December 2014, was one of Egypt's most celebrated writers and novelists.



The novel was translated by Kay Heikkinen and published by the American University in Cairo Press in 2014.



The novel takes place in the village of Tantoura in Palestine and tells the story of a displaced family that lived between 1947 and 2000. The family had to leave their village after being terrorised by the Zionists to live the experience of being displaced and seek refuge in Lebanon, the Emirates and Egypt.



The novel follows the life of a young girl from her days in the village of Tantoura in Palestine up to the dawn of the new century. We participate in events as they unfold, seeing them through the uneducated but sharply intelligent mind of Ruqayya as she tries to make sense of all that has happened to her and her family. With her, we live her love of her land and of her people; we feel the repeated pain of loss, of diaspora, and of cross-generational misunderstanding; and above all, we come to know her indomitable human spirit. As we read we discover that we have become part of Ruqayya’s family, and her voice will remain with us long after we have closed the book.



Ashour was born on 26 May 1946 in Cairo. She studied English literature at Cairo University and earned her MA in comparative literature in 1972. She is best known for her Granada Trilogy.



The trilogy was translated into English by William Granara, a professor of Arabic literature at Harvard University, and published by Syracuse University Press in 2003 and was also translated into Spanish.



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