Samir Abdel Fattah is a Yemeni short story writer, novelist and playwright. He was born in

Jibla, Yemen Jiblah () is a town in the Ibb Governorate of Yemen, south-west of the city of Ibb. It is located at the elevation of around , near Jabal At-Ta'kar (). The town and its surroundings were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List due ...

in 1971, and he moved to

Sanaa Sanaa, officially the Sanaa Municipality, is the ''de jure'' capital and largest city of Yemen. The city is the capital of the Sanaa Governorate, but is not part of the governorate, as it forms a separate administrative unit. At an elevation ...

in 1982, where he studied

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

and business at university. He is known for his short story collections, the first of which, ''Ranin al-matar'', appeared in 2002. He has published two more collections since. He has written two novels: ''Riwayat al-Sayyid Mim'' (2007) and ''Ibn al-nasr'' (2008). He has also written plays for the theatre. Abdel Fattah is a versatile writer, with a particular interest in

European literature Western literature, also known as European literature, is the literature written in the context of Western culture in the languages of Europe, and is shaped by the periods in which they were conceived, with each period containing prominent weste ...

, especially that of Russia. He often deals with existential themes and his work is regarded as part of the

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

in modern Yemeni literature. In 2009, he teamed up with fellow writers

Nadia al-Kokabany Nadia Al-Kokabany is a Yemeni novelist, short story writer and academic. She was born in Taiz and studied architecture at Sanaa University. She completed a PhD in architecture at Cairo University in 2008, before returning to take up an academic pos ...

Wajdi al-Ahdal Wajdi al-Ahdal (, born 1973) is a Yemeni novelist, short story writer and playwright. Laureate of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in 2008, is known for his contemporary literary style and sometimes socially critical works, some ...

and Ali al-Moqri to form a literary group called ''Meeting Yesterday''. His work has been translated into Italian and was included in an anthology of contemporary Yemeni writers called ''Perle Dello Yemen'' (2009).

References

Living people 1971 births Yemeni writers 21st-century Yemeni novelists {{Yemen-writer-stub