Sahar Khalifa

Sahar Khalifa

Sahar Khalifa is considered the foremost Palestinian novelist, widely acclaimed for being the first feminist Palestinian writer, and for her "sensitive, economical and lucid" style. She is the most translated Palestinian author after Mahmoud Darwish. Her fame extends beyond Palestinian and Arab borders, as her translations in many languages attest: She was the only author participating in the French organized Palestinian cultural spring in 1997, whose books sold out immediately.

Sahar Khalifa was born in 1941 in the city of Nablus. She was married in 1959 after her high school graduation in a traditional match that ended in divorce 13 years later. She has two daughters, and lives between Amman, Jordan; and Nablus.

She began writing shortly after the 1967 Israeli invasion of Gaza and the West Bank, and published her first novel in 1974.

Sahar Khalifa completed her secondary education in 1959 in Amman at the Rosary College. She began a new life after her divorce, and completed a BA in English literature from Bir Zeit University. In 1980 she obtained a Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States and obtained an MA in English literature from Chapel -Hill University in North Carolina. She also completed a Ph.D in women’s studies and American literature from Iowa University in 1988.

Khalifa returned to Palestine in 1988, and founded the Women’s Affairs Center in Nablus, which opened a branch in Gaza City in 1991, and in Amman in 1994.

A selection of her works are :

. 1974: "We are not your Slave Girls Anymore" :
This first novel made an impact because of its advocacy of women’s rights, and was turned into radio and TV series in 1977.

. 1975: " Wild Thorns" :
This is the book that made Khalifa famous and gave her literary recognition on an international scale. It is available in a number of languages, among them:

-English: translated by Al Saqi Books, London in 1984, by The Olive Tree in 1988, and in the US by PROTA in 1985.
- Spanish: as "Cactus", by Txalparta, Madrid, 1994.

The book was also translated into French in 1978 by Gallimard, into Hebrew in 1978 by Galileo, into Dutch in 1980 by Uniebok, into Malay in 1992 by Dewan Bahasa, and into Italian in 1996.

. 1980: " The Sunflower" :
Translated into Hebrew by Mifras in 1982, into Russian by Progress Press in Moscow in 1982, into French in 1984, and into Dutch in 1985 by Uniebok.

. 1986: "Memoirs of an Unrealistic Woman" :
This novel depicts the life of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage, and intertwines feminist consciousness with political awareness.

Translated into Italian in 1989, into Dutch by De Geus in 1991.

. 1990: "The Door of the Courtyard " :
Translated into Italian in 1994, into Dutch in 1995 by De Geus, into French in 1997, and currently being translated into Swedish, and Spanish by Txalparta.

. 1997: " The Inheritance":

Authors AtoZ Home Bookstore Top