“a a ashour”

Set in the late nineteenth century on a mythical island off the coast of Yemen, Radwa Ashour's Siraaj: An Arab Tale tells the poignant story of a mother and son as they are drawn inextricably into a revolt against their island's despotic sultan.Amina, a baker in the sultan's palace, anxiously awaits... More

Now in A Comforting Lie -- set in the sumptuous world of interior design -- Ashour masterfully explores the delicate terrain of women who struggle to free themselves from deceptive lovers. A lonely single mother, Helen Patterson, can't help but be drawn to charismatic Ray Richards as his hands run o... More

A powerful novel of life in the mixed culture that existed in Southern Spain before the expulsion of the Arabs and Jews. Radwa Ashour skillfully weaves a history of Granadan rule and an Arabic world into a novel that evokes cultural loss and the disappearance of a vanquished population. The novel fo... More

Arab women's writing in the modern age began with 'A'isha al-Taymuriya, Warda al-Yaziji, Zaynab Fawwaz, and other nineteenth-century pioneers in Egypt and the Levant. This unique study-first published in Arabic in 2004-looks at the work of those pioneers and then traces the development of Arab women... More