Hoda Barakat

Lebanese-born Hoda Barakat is one of the most original voices in modern Arabic literature. Born in 1952, she graduated from Beirut University in 1975 with a degree in French literature.

She taught for a year in al-Khaim village in southern Lebanon. After the beginning of the civil war in Lebanon in 1975, she moved to Bashara in the north. In 1975-76 she went to Paris to start a PhD but because of the civil war she decided to return to her country where she worked as a teacher, journalist and translator. In 1985 her first collection of short stories, entitled Za'irat, was published. In 1985-86 she worked at the Centre for Lebanese Research. In 1988, she helped to establish Shahrazad, a women's magazine. She currently lives in Paris, working for an Arabic-language radio station.

All her novels (so far) have been set during the Lebanese civil war and constructed around a male figure living on the margins of society. The Stone of Laughter, which won the Al-Naqid prize, was the first Arabic novel to have a gay man as its central character. Another of her novels, The Tiller of Waters, won the Naguib Mahouz Medal for Literature.

Interview with Hoda Barakat: al-Bab