Reem Bassiouney was born in 1973 in Alexandria, where she studied English and linguistics before completing a PhD in Arabic Sociolinguistics at Oxford University. She has lectured at the Universities of Cambridge, Georgetown, Oxford, and Utah and has held the Chair of Applied Linguistics at the American University in Cairo since 2013. Bassiouney is an author of prose and academic studies. <\/p>\n\n
Her literary focus is on historical novels about the history of Egypt, in which female characters often play a leading role. A novel by Bassiouney was translated into English for the first time in 2009. \u00bbThe Pistachio Seller\u00ab is told from the perspective of a young, conservative woman who falls in love with her liberal cousin. The novel \u00bboffers an intimate look at Egypt in the 1980s and the changes that a dynamic decade brought to the country’s life and culture\u00ab, according to the American Library Association’s booklist. <\/p>\n\n
In \u00bbAl-Qata’i: Ibn Tulun’s City Without Walls\u00ab (2023), Bassiouney tells the story of Egyptian leader Ahmad Ibn Tulun, who wanted to build what is now Cairo into a thriving multicultural empire, and places themes of diversity and equality in a historical context. \u00bbAl Halwani: The Fatimid Trilogy\u00ab is set in Egypt during the Fatimid dynasty and tells of major historical events as well as people’s everyday lives.<\/p>\n\n
The author received the Sawiris Cultural Award in 2010 for the novel \u00bbProfessor Hanaa\u00ab. \u00bbSons of the People. The Mamluk Trilogy\u00ab was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Award in the Best Egyptian Novel category in 2020 and was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award. <\/p>\n\n
In 2023, Bassiouney was nominated for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award with \u00bbAl-Qata’i: Ibn Tulun’s City Without Walls\u00ab and was awarded the prize the following year for \u00bbAl Halwani: The Fatimid Trilogy\u00ab. She won the excellence award for literature from the Supreme council of culture in Egypt for all her novels in 2022. Her novels have been translated into English, Greek, and Spanish. <\/p>\n\n
The author lives in Cairo.<\/p>\n\n
As of May 2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":79282,"template":"","jct-role":[1080],"jct-origin":[496],"jct-ilb-years":[906],"class_list":["post-81375","authors","type-authors","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","jct-role-author","jct-origin-egypt","jct-ilb-years-2024-en"],"yoast_head":"\n