Ibtisam Abdallah (; 1942/1943 – 7 March 2023) was an Iraqi novelist, short-story writer and literary translator. Abdallah was born in

Kirkuk Kirkuk (; ; ; ) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of the Kirkuk Governorate. The city is home to a diverse population of Kurds, Iraqi Turkmen, Iraqi Turkmens and Arabs. Kirkuk sits on the ruins of the original Kirkuk Cit ...

but had lived mostly in

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

. As of 2001, she had published four novels and one collection of short stories. The best-known of her novels is ''Mesopotamia'', published in Baghdad in 2001. The same year, she became the editor-in-chief of ''Al-Thaqafa Al-Ajnabiyya'' (Foreign Culture), a quarterly journal devoted to foreign literature and culture, the only one of its kind in Iraq. (The magazine ceased publishing in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.) Abdallah translated several Western literary works into

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, notably JM Coetzee's award-winning novel ''

Waiting for the Barbarians ''Waiting for the Barbarians'' is a novel by the South African writer J. M. Coetzee. First published in 1980, it was chosen by Penguin for its series '' Great Books of the 20th Century'' and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geof ...

''.Profile on Banipal website
/ref> She also translated the memoirs of

Mikis Theodorakis Michail "Mikis" Theodorakis ( ; 29 July 1925 – 2 September 2021) was a Greek composer and lyricist credited with over 1,000 works. He scored for the films '' Zorba the Greek'' (1964), '' Z'' (1969), and '' Serpico'' (1973). He was a three-ti ...

and

Angela Davis Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of ...

. Abdallah's writing is known for its juxtaposition of

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

themes with contemporary social and political issues. Some of her short stories have appeared in English translations. She was also well known in Iraq as a journalist and television personality.

Works translated into English

* The Nursery, short story, appeared in

Banipal ''Banipal'' is an independent literary magazine dedicated to the promotion of contemporary Arab literature through translations in English. It was founded in London in 1998 by Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon. The magazine is published three ti ...

18 (2003) and Contemporary Iraqi fiction: an anthology (2008) by Shakir M. Mustafa * In the Garden, short story, appeared in

Al-Ahram Weekly ''Al-Ahram Weekly'' is an English-language weekly broadsheet printed by the Al-Ahram Publishing House in Cairo, Egypt. History and profile ''Al Ahram Weekly'' was established in 1991 by the ''Al-Ahram'' newspaper, which also runs a French-langu ...

in November 1998 in a translation by

Denys Johnson-Davies Denys Johnson-Davies (Arabic: دنيس جونسون ديڤيز) (also known as Abdul Wadud) was an eminent Arabic-to- English literary translator who translated, ''inter alia,'' several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abdallah, Ibtisam 1940s births Year of birth uncertain 2023 deaths 21st-century Iraqi journalists People from Kirkuk Iraqi translators English–Arabic translators Iraqi short story writers 21st-century Iraqi writers 21st-century Iraqi women writers 21st-century Iraqi novelists Literary translators 21st-century translators