Ibtihal Salem is an Egyptian

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 short story and writer. She was born in Giza and studied psychology at Ain Shams University

Ain Shams University

Ain Shams University is an institute of higher education located in Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 1950, the university provides education at the undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate levels.-History:...

. She has worked in Egyptian theatre and radio. Her first collection of short stories, al-Nawras (The Seagull) was published in 1989, followed by a second volume Dunya Saghira (Small World) in 1992. Her first novel Nawafiz Zarqaa (Blue Windows, 2000) was well received by critics. She has published several more short story collections and novels. Salem is considered to be part of the same generation of writers as Sahar Tawfiq

Sahar Tawfiq

Sahar Tawfiq is an Egyptian novelist, short story writer and translator. Born and raised in Cairo, she studied Arabic language and literature at Al-Azhar University. She has worked as a teacher and educationist in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia....

, Siham Bayyumi

Siham Bayyumi

Siham Bayyumi is an Egyptian writer and journalist. She was born in Cairo and studied at Helwan University. She has worked as a journalist at the Cairo newspaper Al Gomhuria, and has published works of both fiction and non-fiction. Her books include the short story collection Al-Khayl Wa-Al-Layl...

 and Salwa Bakr

Salwa Bakr

Salwa Bakr is an Egyptian critic, novelist and author. She was born in the Matariyya district in Cairo in 1949. Her father was a railway worker. She studied business at Ain Shams University, gaining a BA degree in 1972. She went on to earn another BA in literary criticism in 1976, before embarking...

.

A selection of her stories has been translated into English by Marilyn Booth

Marilyn Booth

-Biography:Booth graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1978, and was the first female winner of the Wendell Scholarship. She obtained a D.Phil. in Arabic literature and Middle Eastern history from St Antony's College, Oxford in 1985. She received a Marshall Fellowship for her...

 under the title Children of the Waters. Her work has also been translated into German (by Hartmut Fahndrich

Hartmut Fähndrich

Hartmut Fähndrich is a German scholar and translator, specialising in translation of Arabic literature into German. He was born in Tübingen and studied at the universities of Tübingen, Münster, and UCLA. He obtained an MA in comparative literature and a PhD in Islamic studies from UCLA. In 1972,...

), French and Italian.

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