Shahla Ujayli (born 1976) is a

Syrian Syrians () are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, most of whom have Arabic, especially its Levantine and Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend ...

fiction writer and academic. A

laureate In English, the word laureate has come to signify eminence or association with literary awards or Military awards and decorations, military glory. It is also used for recipients of the Nobel Prize, the Gandhi Peace Award, the Student Peace Pri ...

of the Al Multaqa Prize for Arabic short stories, she became notable for her short story collection ''A Bed for the King’s Daughter'' and for her novels ''Summer with the Enemy'' and ''A Sky Close to Our House''. Some of her works have been translated into English and German. Her work is part of contemporary Syrian literature in the context of imprisonment, war and exile.

Life and career

Ujayli studied modern

Arabic literature Arabic literature ( / ALA-LC: ''al-Adab al-‘Arabī'') is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is ''Adab (Islam), Adab'', which comes from a meaning of etiquett ...

Aleppo University University of Aleppo (, also called Aleppo University) is a public university located in Aleppo, Syria. It is the second largest university in Syria after the University of Damascus. During 2005–06, the university had over 61,000 undergraduate ...

, graduating with a doctorate. Subsequently, she became a lecturer at the American University in Madaba,

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

. She made her literary debut in 2005, publishing a short story collection called ''The Mashrabiyya''. Her first novels, written in Arabic, were ''The Cat's Eye'' (2006) that won the Jordan State Award for Literature, ''Persian Carpet'' (2013) and ''A Sky Close to Us'' (2015). The last-named book was nominated for the 2016

International Prize for Arabic Fiction The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) (), also known as "the Arabic Booker", is regarded as the most prestigious and important literary prize in the Arab world. Its aim is to reward excellence in contemporary Arabic creative writing ...

(IPAF). Her short story collection ''A Bed for the King’s Daughter,'' published in Arabic in 2017, was awarded the Al Multaqa Prize. Ujayli was also a participant at the 2014 IPAF nadwa, an annual writing workshop for promising emerging writers. In 2019, her novel ''Summer with the Enemy'' was again shortlisted for the IPAF.

Selected works

Fiction in English translation

* ''A Bed for the King’s Daughter.'' Short stories. Translated by

Sawad Hussain Sawad Hussain is a writer and translator of contemporary Arabic literature into English, based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. She is known for her award-winning translations, as lecturer and speaker on the field of literary translation and for her ...

. Center for Middle Eastern Studies/University of Texas Press, 2021, ISBN 9781477322284. * *

Academic studies

* ''Mirror of Strangeness: Articles on Cultural Criticism'' (2006) * ''The Syrian Novel: Experimentalism and Theoretical Categories'' (2009) * ''Cultural Particularity in the Arabic Novel'' (2011) * Transformation of Identity in the Arab Novel: Jordanian Novel as a Model. ''Dirasat: Human and Social Sciences.'' 45(2), 27-41, 2018. * The Aesthetic Identity of Arabic Novel: Post-Colonial Perspective. Beirut: Amman, Algeria: Dhifaf- Majaz- Ekhtilaf, 2020 * *

Literature

* * Mahfouz, Naghib, et al. 2017. ''Arab Literary Awards: Naghib Mahfouz, Muhammad Khudayyir, Alaa Khaled,

Elias Farkouh Elias Farkouh (Arabic: إلياس فركوح) (1948 – July 15, 2020) was a Jordanian short story writer and novelist. He was born in Amman in 1948 and was educated in Amman and East Jerusalem. He graduated from the Arab University of Beiru ...

, Shahla Ujayli, Mahmoud Saeed, Ashur Etwebi, and Yahya Al-Sheikh''. ''Banipal.'' London: Banipal Publishing ISBN 9780995636910.

References

External links

Shahla Ujayli: A Bed for the King's Daughter.
at

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Shahla Ujayli's short story ''Dead Man’s Hand'', translated by Sawad Hussain
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ujayli, Shahla Living people University of Aleppo alumni Academic staff of the American University of Madaba 1976 births Syrian women writers