Hanan al-Shaykh

Hanan al-Shaykh, 2003

Hanan al-Shaykh (born November 12, 1945 in Beirut ) is a Lebanese author of Arabic women's literature .

Life

Hanan al-Shaykh comes from a strict Shiite family. Both her father and brother closely watched over their social life in childhood and adolescence. She attended the Almillah Primary School for Muslim girls and received a traditional Islamic girls education there. She then went to Ahliyyah School. She completed her monoeducational school career in 1966 at the American Girls College in Cairo ( Egypt ) and returned to Lebanon. There she worked for the newspaper Al-Nahar until 1975 . In 1975 she left Beirut when the Lebanese civil war broke out and moved to Saudi Arabia to work and write there. She currently lives in London with her family .

plant

Hanan al-Shaykh's literature follows in the footsteps of contemporary Arab women authors like Nawal El Saadawi in such a way that it questions the role of women in the traditional social structures of the Middle East . Her work is strongly influenced by the patriarchal control of father, brother and neighborhood that shaped her childhood and adolescence. Her work can be read as a commentary on the status of women in the Arab-Muslim world. Among other things, she questions existing ideas about sexuality , obedience, modesty and family relationships.

Often she describes explicitly sexual scenes in her works and thus violates the moral standards of conservative Arab societies, so that her books are partially indexed or forbidden. Here, for example, the novel Sahra's story can be mentioned, which addresses abortion , divorce , birth out of wedlock, sanity and sexual permissiveness. The novel Im Bann der High-Tech-Harems describes the lesbian , pornographic relationship between two women.

In addition to these socially critical topics, she also writes about the Lebanese civil war .

Fonts

• Intihar Rajul Mayyit (Suicide of a Dead Man), 1970, Arabic انتحار رجل ميت
• Faras al-Shaitan , 1971
• The Devil's Horse , 1975
• Ḥikāyat Zahra , 1980, Arabic حكاية زهراء
  • Sahra's story: a novel from Lebanon , translated by Veronika Theis, afterword Hartmut Fähndrich, Lenos, Basel 1989, ISBN 3-85787-189-X
  • The Story of Zahra , English translation 1994
• The Persian Carpet in Arabic Short Stories , 1983
• Scent of a Gazelle , 1988, Arabic: Arabic مسك الغزال
• Misk al-ghazal , 1989
  • Women of Sand and Myrrh , English translation 1992
  • Under the spell of high-tech harems , translated by Irene Rumler, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-499-12958-2
• Mail from Beirut , 1992, Arabic بريد من بيروت
• I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops , Arabic 1994
  • I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops , English translation 2002
• Beirut Blues , 1992
  • English translation 1995
• Only in London , English translation 2001
• The locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story , English translation 2009, Pantheon, ISBN 978-0-307-37820-0
• Two women by the sea , translated by Hartmut Fähndrich, Marebuch, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-936384-02-9

Web links

• Hanan al-Shaykh . The Lebanese Women's Awakening