Basma Abdel Aziz
Basma Abdel Aziz (Arabic: بسمة عبد العزيز) (born 1976) is an Egyptian writer, psychiatrist, visual artist and human rights activist, nicknamed 'the rebel'.[1] She is a weekly columnist for Egypt's al-Shorouk newspaper. She is the winner of the Sawiris Cultural Award, the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces award, and the Ahmed Bahaa-Eddin Award.[2] She lives in Cairo.
Life and work
Born in Cairo, Basma Abdel Aziz has a BA in medicine and surgery, an MS in neuropsychiatry, and a diploma in sociology. She works for the General Secretariat of Mental Health in Egypt's Ministry of Health and the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture.[3]
Abdel Aziz gained second place for her short stories in the 2008 Sawiris Cultural Award, and a 2008 award from the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces. Her sociological examination of police violence in Egypt, Temptation of Absolute Power, won the Ahmed Bahaa-Eddin Award in 2009.[4]
Her debut novel Al-Tabuur (The Queue) was published by Dar al-Tanweer in 2013,[4] and Melville House published an English translation by Elisabeth Jaquette in 2016.[5]
In 2016 she was named one of Foreign Policy 's Leading Global Thinkers.[6] In 2018 she was named by The Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute in the list of top influencers of Arabic public opinion.[7]
Works
Fiction
- May God Make it Easy, 2008
- The Boy Who Disappeared, 2008
- Al-Tabuur (The Queue), 2013
- Hona Badan, 2018
Non-fiction
- [Beyond Torture], 2011
- [Temptation of Absolute Power], 2009
- [Memory of Repression], 2014
- [The Power of the Text], 2016
References
- Mohammed Shoair, Basma Abdul Aziz: The Ever-Ready Egyptian Rebel Archived 2018-02-07 at the Wayback Machine, Al-Akhbar English, March 28, 2012. Accessed March 9, 2018.
- "Curtis Brown". www.curtisbrown.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-03-17.
- The Queue: Document No. 3, Words Without Borders, January 2016
- New release: 'The Queue' by Basma Abdel-Aziz, Ahram Online, 27 Feb 2013.
- https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/the-queue/
- "Shubbak: Basma Abdel Aziz in conversation with Jo Glanville - English PEN". English PEN. Retrieved 2018-03-17.
- "Basma Abdel Aziz - Global Influence". Global Influence. Retrieved 2018-03-17.