The Heart of the Matter: Palestine in the World Today

By Ahdaf Soueif

Ahdaf Soueif is the author of the bestselling The Map of Love which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1999.  Ms Soueif is also a political and cultural commentator. A collection of her essays, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground, was published in 2004. Her translation (from Arabic into English) of Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah, with a forward by Edward Said himself, also came out in 2004. She lives with her children in London and Cairo.

Born in Egypt in 1950, she grew up in both Egyptian and English environments but writes her Arabic stories in English, a fact which intially surprised her as much as the Arab world. She performs the difficult, dangerous and highly unusual task of writing about the Arabic world in English - not only a foreign language but the language of imperialism and occupation. In The Map of Love, she explores, among other themes, the question of language - the assumptions, beliefs and obstacles of communicating in different languages, rooted in the daily process of negotiation between Egyptianness and the English language she faces herself.

Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Time: 18:00
Location: MS.02 (Mathematics Building), Off Library Road, University of Warwick
Tickets: Complimentary tickets must be obtained by calling the Warwick Arts Centre Box Office 024 7652 4524

For more information, please contact the Department of English on 02476 523 323.

Further Information on Ahdaf Soueif

• Mapping the Divide - The Guardian - Saturday 11 June 2005