Hanan al-Shaykh
Hanan al-Shaykh (born 12 November 1945) is a Lebanese author.
Also recorded as Hanan al-Sheikh
Hanan al-Shaykh
Anneli Salo · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Born
- 12 November 1945
- Birthplace
- Beirut, Lebanon
- Education
- American College for Girls
- Occupation
- Writer Hanan al-Shaykh (born 12 November 1945) is a Lebanese author.
- Nationality
- Lebanon.
- Honours
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
- Languages
- Arabic and English.
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Hanan al-Shaykh (born 12 November 1945) is a Lebanese author.
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Authority files
wikidata · Q290143 · wikipedia · Hanan al-Shaykh
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Honorific Suffix — FRSL • Born — 12 November 1945 • Birthplace — Beirut, Lebanon • Children — Juman • Education — American College for Girls • Occupation — Writer Hanan al-Shaykh (born 12 November 1945) is a Lebanese author.
Biography
Biography
Hanan al-Shaykh was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1945, into a strict Shi'a family. Her father and brother exerted strict social control over her during her childhood and adolescence. She attended the Almillah primary school for Muslim girls where she received a traditional education for Muslim girls, before continuing her education at the Ahliah school. She continued her gender-segregated education at the American College for Girls in Cairo, Egypt, graduating in 1966. She returned to Lebanon to work for the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar until 1975. She left Beirut again in 1975 at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War and moved to Saudi Arabia to work and write there. She now lives in London, England. She is a novelist and playwright, her novels including Only in London, which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019. Her daughter is Juman Malouf, a writer, illustrator and costume designer who is also the romantic partner of American director Wes Anderson.
Major themes
Major themes
Al-Shaykh's work often implies or states sexually explicit scenes and sexual situations that go directly against the social mores of conservative Arab society, which has led to her books being banned in the more conservative areas of the region including Arab countries in the Persian Gulf. In other countries, her books are difficult to obtain because of censorship laws that prevent the Arabic translations from being easily accessible to the public. Specific examples are The Story of Zahra, which includes abortion, divorce, sanity, children born outside of marriage, and sexual promiscuity, and Women of Sand and Myrrh, which contains scenes of a romantic relationship between two of the main female protagonists. In addition to her prolific writing on the condition of Arab women and her literary social criticism, Al-Shaykh is also part of a group of authors writing about the Lebanese Civil War.
Work in Arabic
Work in Arabic
• Suicide of a Dead Man, 1970 (انتحار رجل ميت) • The Devil's Horse, 1975 • The Story of Zahra, 1980 (حكاية زهرة) • The Persian Carpet in Arabic Short Stories, 1983 • Scent of a Gazelle, 1988 (مسك الغزال) • Mail from Beirut, 1992 (بريد بيروت) • I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops, 1994 (أكنس الشمس عن السطوح) • Two Women by the Sea, 2003 (امرأتان على شطىء البحر)
Works that have been translated into English from Arabic
Works that have been translated into English from Arabic
• Women of Sand and Myrrh (trans. 1992) • The Story of Zahra (trans. 1994) • Beirut Blues (trans. 1992) • Only in London (trans. 2001) • I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops (trans. 2002) • The Persian Carpet • The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story (trans. 2009) • The Occasional Virgin, Pantheon (2018),
Works in English
Works in English
• One Thousand and One Nights: A Retelling, Pantheon (2013)

Hanan al-Shaykh 11.18.08
kellywritershouse · Hanan al-Shaykh 11.18.08

Hanan al-Shaykh 11.18.08
kellywritershouse · Hanan al-Shaykh 11.18.08
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1945
Hanan al-Shaykh born at Lebanon.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Tresilian, David. «Tendencias en la literatura árabe contemporánea». Revista Culturas.
- 2.Liukkonen, Petri; Pesonen, Ari. «Books and writers» (en inglés). Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto, 2008.
- 3.Winter, Laurel. «Review of Women of Sand and Myrrh» (en inglés). Voices from the gaps - University of Minnesota.
- 4.Karmi, Sali. «‘Many Kinds of Strong Voices’: Transnational Encounters and Literary Ambassadorship in the Fiction of Margaret Atwood and Hanan Al-Shaykh» (en inglés). Thesis. University of Exeter, diciembre 2008.
- 5.Schlote, Christiane. «An interview with Hanan al-Shaykh» (en inglés). Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the representation of London, septiembre 2003.
- 6.al-Shaykh, Hanan. «"I am too young to marry!" she yelled» (en inglés). The Guardian, 6 de junio de 2009.
- 7.Makhlouf, Georgia. «Hanan el-Cheikh, soeur de Shéhérazade» (en francés). L'Orient littéraire, noviembre 2011.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q290143: Hanan al-ShaykhWikimedia Foundation
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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