Arab Women Narrators: Challenges and Realities

Reem Bassiouney

Professor and writer

Reem Bassiouney was born in Alexandria, Egypt. She obtained her MPhil and PhD from Oxford University in linguistics. She has previously taught Arabic language and linguistics at universities in the U.K. and the U.S., including Cambridge, Oxford and Utah. She currently works as the series editor for Routledge studies in language and identity and is Chair of the Department of Applied Linguistics at the American University in Cairo.

Her academic books include Functions of Code-switching in Egypt (2006), Arabic Sociolinguistics with its two editions (2008) and (2020), and Language and Identity in Modern Egypt (2014).

Her edited volumes include Arabic and the Media: Linguistic Analyses and Applications (2010), Arabic Language and Linguistics (co-editor with G. Katz, 2012), The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics (co-editor with A. Benmamoun, 2018), Identity and Dialect Performance (2017), and The Routledge Handbook of Arabic and Identity (co-editor with K. Walters, forthcoming 2020).

Bassiouney is also an award-winning novelist. Her first novel, "رائحة البحر" 'The Smell of the Sea' was published in 2005. In 2007, she published "بائع الفستق" 'The Pistachio Seller'. The novel was translated in English and won the 2009 King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies Translation of Arabic Literature Award. Her next novel, "الدكتورة هناء" 'Dr. Hanaa' won the 2009 Sawiris Foundation Literatry Prize for Young Writers. The novel was translated to English, Greek, and Spanish. Bassiouney then wrote "الحب على الطريقة العربية" 'Love, Arab Style', followed by her 2010 novel "أشياء رائعة" 'Mortal Designs', which was also translated to English. In 2017, she published her novel "مرشد سياحي" 'The Tour Guide'. Her most recent masterpiece, "أولاد الناس ثلاثية المماليك" 'Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy' was published in 2018. Reem Bassiouney was awarded the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Award from Egypt’s Supreme Council for Culture for the best Egyptian novel of the year 2019/2020, making her the first woman to win this prize.