Ashour was born in El-Manial[2] to Mustafa Ashour, a lawyer and literature enthusiast, and Mai Azzam, a poet and an artist. She graduated from Cairo University with a BA degree in 1967. In 1972, she received her MA in Comparative Literature from the same university. In 1975, Ashour graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a PhD in African American Literature.[3] Her dissertation was entitled The search for a Black poetics: a study of Afro-American critical writings.[4] While preparing for her PhD, Ashour was remarked as the first doctoral candidate in English who studied the literature of the African-American.[5] She taught at Ain Shams University, Cairo.
Between 1969 and 1980, Ashour's mainly focused on studying, raising her son and playing an active role as an activist. She married Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti in 1970. She gave birth to her son, poet Tamim al-Barghouti, in 1977. In that same year, Ashour's husband, Mourid Barghouti was deported from Egypt to Hungary. As she and her son stayed in Cairo, they used to make frequent visits to Mourid.[6]
Ashour died on 30 November 2014 after months of long-term health problems.[7]
From 1990 to 1993, she served as Chair of the Department of English Language and Literature in the Faculty of Arts at Ain Shams University, as well as teaching at the university and supervising research and dissertations related to her MA. degrees.[8][9]
At the beginning of the third millennium, Ashour returned to the field of literary criticism, where she published a collection of works on the field of applied criticism, contributed to the Encyclopedia of the Arabic Writer (2004), and supervised the translation of the ninth part of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Literary Criticism (2005).[10]
Between 1999 and 2012 she published four novels and one collection of short stories, the most important of which are the novel Tanturia (2011) and Lady Young's collection of anecdotal reports.[11][12]
In 2007 she was awarded the Constantine Kwavis International Literary Prize in Greece, and in 2008 she published an English translation of Mourid Barghouti's poetry anthology entitled
Midnight and Other Poems.[13][14]
Mourid Barghouti, Radwa Ashour's husband, wrote many letters and poems expressing his sincere feelings for her and she, in turn, also exchanged love letters with him.[15]
She has a number of short stories that were published in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.
Al-Tantouria has been published in English
Translated in Tamil by Dr. P. M. M. Irfan, August 2021
Referencesedit
^"The English Pen Online World Atlas – Radwa Ashour". Penatlas.org. 31 May 2008. Archived from the original on 18 March 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
^"seo.book الرحلة pdf by Radwa Ashour". www.ysk-books.com. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
^"seo.book حَجَر دافئ pdf by Radwa Ashour". www.ysk-books.com. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
^"seo.book سراج pdf by Radwa Ashour". www.ysk-books.com. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
^"Arab America – News – Egyptian Novelist Radwa Ashour's "Specters" Translated by Barbara Romaine". Arabdetroit.com. Archived from the original on 2 October 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
^"seo.book الطنطورية pdf by Radwa Ashour". www.ysk-books.com. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
^"seo.book فرج pdf by Radwa Ashour". www.ysk-books.com. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
^ ab"Radwa Ashour – Arab Women Writers". arabwomenwriters.com. 3 May 2014. Archived from the original on 4 January 2018. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
^"Radwa Ashour". The Kennedy Center. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
External linksedit
Githa Hariharan in Conversation with Radwa Ashour and Ahdaf Souief, Newsclick, 6 April 2010
"Radwa Ashour: As one long prepared", Al Ahram, Youssef Rakha, 27 January – 2 February 2000
Guy Mannes-Abbott (10 January 2011). "Spectres, By Radwa Ashour". The Independent.
Writing, Teaching, Living: Egyptian Novelist Radwa Ashour, Arab Literature, 19 March 2011