Ibtisam Abdallah ( ar, ابتسام عبد الله; 1942/1943 – 7 March 2023) was an Iraqi novelist, short-story writer and literary translator. Abdallah was born in Kirkuk but had lived mostly in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesipho ...

. 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 The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...

in 2003.) Abdallah translated several Western literary works into

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

, notably

JM Coetzee John Maxwell Coetzee OMG (born 9 February 1940) is a South African–Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in t ...

'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 Geoff ...

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

Mikis Theodorakis Michail "Mikis" Theodorakis ( el, Μιχαήλ "Μίκης" Θεοδωράκης ; 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'' ...

and

Angela Davis Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member o ...

. Abdallah's writing is known for its juxtaposition of feminist 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-lang ...

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