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{{short description|Palestinian writer (born 1941)}}
{{expand Hebrew|date=September 2018}}
{{use dmy dates |date=June 2024}}
{{expand Hebrew|topic=bio|date=September 2018}}
{{Infobox person
{{Infobox person
|name=Sahar Khalifeh<br />سحر خليفة
|name=Sahar Khalifeh
| native_name = سحر خليفة
| native_name_lang = ar
|birth_place=[[Nablus]], [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate for Palestine]]
|birth_place=[[Nablus]], [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate for Palestine]]
|birth_date= 1941
|birth_date= 1941
|occupation=writer, novelist, feminist
|occupation=writer, novelist, feminist
|image=
|residence=[[Iowa]], USA; [[Nablus]]; Palestinian Territories|image=
|awards=[[Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature]]
|awards=[[Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature]]
}}
}}
'''Sahar Khalifeh''' ({{lang-ar|'''سحر خليفة'''}}) (born 1941) is a [[Palestinians|Palestinian]] writer.<ref>{{cite web|accessdate=2018-11-29|title=Sahar Khalifeh|url=https://www.arabicfiction.org/en/Sahar-Khalifeh-author|website=[[International Prize for Arabic Fiction]]}}</ref> One of her best-known works is the novel ''[[Wild Thorns]]'' (1976).
'''Sahar Khalifeh''' ({{langx|ar|سحر خليفة}}) (born 1941) is a [[Palestinians|Palestinian]] writer.<ref>{{cite web|access-date=5 June 2024|title=Sahar Khalifeh|url=https://www.arabicfiction.org/en/Sahar-Khalifeh-author|website=[[International Prize for Arabic Fiction]]}}</ref> She has written eleven novels, which have been translated into English, French, Hebrew, German, Spanish, and many other languages. One of her best-known works is the novel ''[[Wild Thorns]]'' (1976). She has won international prizes, including the 2006 [[Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature]], for ''The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant''.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Sahar Khalifeh|url=https://hoopoefiction.com/hoopoe-author/sahar-khalifeh/|access-date=2021-07-28|website=Hoopoe|language=en-US}}{{dead link |date=June 2024}}</ref> Khalifeh obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from [[Birzeit University]], Palestine.


==Biography==
She is the founder of the Women's Affairs Center in Nablus, which now has branches in [[Gaza City|Gaza]] and [[Amman, Jordan]]. Her works include several novels and essays, translated into several languages, including [[Hebrew]], as well as non-fiction writing.
Sahar Khalifeh was born in [[Nablus]], [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate Palestine]], the fifth of eight daughters. Khalifeh reflects “I learned that I was a member of a miserable, useless, worthless sex. From childhood, I was taught to prepare myself for the risks associated with being a woman.”<ref>{{Cite web|title=My Life, Myself, and the World |website=Al Jadid|url=https://www.aljadid.com/content/my-life-myself-and-world|access-date=5 June 2024 |first=Sahar |last=Khalifeh}}</ref>


In childhood, Khalifeh found creative outlets like reading, writing, and painting. She was married off against her will shortly after finishing high school in [[Amman|Amman, Jordan]]. She describes her 13-year marriage as “miserable and devastating” and did not write during this period. She once again found refuge in books: “I indulged, just like anybody else in the educated Arab world, in the existentialist movement and existential intellectualism. Until the [[Israeli occupation of the West Bank|Occupation]] took place, I continued to be an existentialist.”<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Johnson|first1=Penny|last2=Khalifeh|first2=Sahar|date=July 1990|title=Uprising of a Novelist: Penny Johnson Interviews Sahar Khalifeh|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4020815|journal=The Women's Review of Books|volume=7|issue=10/11|pages=24|doi=10.2307/4020815|jstor=4020815|issn=0738-1433}}</ref>
==Early life and education==
Khalifeh was born in [[Nablus]], [[Mandatory Palestine|Palestine]]. After studying at the University of [[Birzeit University|Birzeit]], in the Palestinian occupied territories, she received a [[Fulbright Scholarship]] and went to continue her studies in the U.S. She got an MA in English Literature from the [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]] and a Ph.D. in Women's Studies from the [[University of Iowa]] before returning to Palestine in 1988.


After the [[Six-Day War|1967]] defeat of Jordan and subsequent Israeli [[Israeli occupation of the West Bank|occupation of the West Bank]], Khalifeh began writing again. She began with “resistance poetry”, inspired by the works of [[Mahmoud Darwish]] before breaking from the limited female narratives typical in resistance literature. Her first novel, ''After the Defeat'', followed the interactions of families in a Nablus apartment building after the war. The only manuscript of this novel was confiscated by Israeli authorities and never published. Khalifeh continued writing and ''We Are Not Your Slaves Any Longer'', was published in 1974, followed by her best-known novel, ''Wild Thorns,'' in 1976. ''Wild Thorns'' explored class nuances under [[Israeli occupation of the West Bank|Israeli occupation]]. She published ''The Sunflower'' in 1980 as a [[sequel]] to ''Wild Thorns'' to focus on female narratives that were largely absent from the original story. In her autobiography, ''A Novel for My Story'', she describes beginning life as a university student at the age of thirty-two alongside two other friends from Nablus.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Khalifeh|first=Sahar|title=University Student|url=https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/march-2020-womens-life-writing-in-arabic-university-student-khalifeh-hussa|access-date=2021-08-16|website=Words Without Borders|date=18 March 2020 }}</ref>
==''Wild Thorns''==
{{Main|Wild Thorns}}
One of her best-known works is the novel ''[[Wild Thorns]]'' (1976). An excerpt reads as follows:


She continued her education in the U.S., receiving a [[Fulbright scholarship]] to complete her MA in English from the [[University of North Carolina Chapel Hill]]. She received her Ph.D. in Women's studies and American literature from the [[University of Iowa]]. She returned to Nablus in 1988 after the start of the [[First Intifada|first intifada]] and began writing ''Bab al-Saha'' (''Passage to the Plaza''), a novel depicting women's lives against the background of the Intifada. In 1988, Khalifeh also founded the Women's Affairs Center in Nablus. She describes her work with women in Nablus in an interview with Penny Johnson “I didn't bring an image of an institution from abroad. I learned from ‘reality.’” Khalifeh has since opened Women’s Affairs Center branches in Gaza City, West Bank, and Amman, Jordan{{citation needed|date=November 2023}}.
:'Halt!' The order came from a soldier sitting in front of the wooden walkway. Usama stopped, his heart pounding. 'Open your suitcase!' The [[Israeli Army|Israeli]] stretched out his hand and rifled the contents. 'What's this?' '[[Librium]].' 'Yeah, you people are crazy about that stuff.'

Khalifeh has continued writing, one of her recent publications [[:ar:أصل وفصل|أصلٌ وفصل]] (Root and Branch) was published in 2009 by Dar al-Adeb and translated into English as ''Of Noble Origins'' in 2012. This novel, set on the eve of [[Nakba|the Nakba]] of 1948 & the state of Israel’s establishment, explores the stories of characters confronting the [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate]] and the [[Zionism|Zionist movement]]. Khalifeh’s most recent publication of 2010 ''My First and Only Love'' follows the story of a Palestinian woman who, after many years in exile, returns home to Nablus.<ref>{{Cite web|title=the glasshouse novel 1936|url=https://kfresh.ca/5qaqer3r/the-glasshouse-novel-1936|access-date=2021-08-16|website=kfresh.ca|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20210816160255/https://kfresh.ca/5qaqer3r/the-glasshouse-novel-1936 |archive-date=16 August 2021}}</ref> This novel was published in English by Hoopoe in March 2021. Khalifeh has published eleven novels, all of which deal with the situation of the Palestinians under occupation.{{citation needed|date=November 2023}}

==Selected works==
===Publications by Khalifeh===
The following novels are available in translation into English:
*{{cite book |title=Wild Thorns |publisher=Interlink |date=2000 |oclc=42581514}}
*{{cite book |title=The Inheritance |publisher=American University in Cairo Press |translator-first=Aida A. |translator-last=Bamia |date=2005 |oclc=62887830}}
*{{cite book |title=The End of Spring |publisher=Interlink |translator-first=Paula |translator-last=Haydar |date=2008 |oclc=154799504}}
*{{cite book |title=The Image, the Icon and the Covenant |publisher=Interlink |date=2008 |translator-first=Aida A. |translator-last=Bamia |oclc=147985601}}
*{{cite book |title=Of Noble Origins |publisher=American University in Cairo Press |translator-first=Aida A. |translator-last=Bamia |date=2012 |oclc=748331417}}
*{{cite book |title=Passage to the Plaza |publisher=Seagull Books |translator-first=Sawad |translator-last=Hussain |date=2020 |oclc=1139137431}}
*{{cite book |title=My First and Only Love |publisher=Hoopoe |translator-first=Aida A. |translator-last=Bamia |date=2021 |oclc=1250276496}}

Other novels not translated into English:
* {{cite book |title=Lam na’ud ghawārī lakum |trans-title=We Are not Your Slave Girls Anymore |publisher=Dar al-Adab |date=1974 |script-title=ar: لم نعد جواري لكم}}
* {{cite book |title=Abbad al-Shams |trans-title=The Sunflower |publisher=Dar al-Adab |date=1980 |script-title=ar: عباد الشمس}}
* {{cite book |title=Mudhakkirāt imra’ah ghayr wāqi’īyah |trans-title=Memoirs of an Unrealistic Woman |publisher=Dar al-Adab |script-title=ar: مذكرات امرأة غير واقعية |date=1986}}
* {{cite book |title=Rabi’ Harr |script-title=ar:ربيع حار |trans-title=Hot Spring |publisher=Dar al-Adab |date=2004}}

===Publications with contributions by Khalifeh===
*''Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature'' by [[Salma Jayyusi]] (Columbia University Press), contains excerpts of her earlier work{{citation needed|date=November 2023}}


==Awards==
==Awards==
*2006: [[Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature]] for ''The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant.''<ref>"Palestinian female novelist granted Naguib Mahfouz medal in Cairo." ''Xinhua News Agency.'' (Dec. 11, 2006). Gale Document Number: GALE|A155758476.</ref>
*2006: [[Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature]] for ''The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant.''<ref>{{cite web |title=Palestinian female novelist granted Naguib Mahfouz medal in Cairo |work=Xinhua News Agency |date=December 11, 2006 |url=https://go.gale.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA155758476}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://aucpress.com/mahfouz-medal/ |title=The Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature |publisher=American University in Cairo |access-date=5 June 2024}}</ref>
*2013: The Mohamed Zafzaf Prize, Morocco<ref>{{cite web|first1=Sarah|last1=Irving|access-date=2018-11-29|title=Palestinian novelist Sahar Khalifeh awarded Moroccan literary prize|url=https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/sarah-irving/palestinian-novelist-sahar-khalifeh-awarded-moroccan-literary-prize|website=[[The Electronic Intifada]]|date=1 July 2013}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}


== Sources ==
== External links ==
{{Wikiquote}}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070401004645/http://adab.chez-alice.fr/Samed/sahar.htm Bio-bibliography (in French) on the site Samed devoted to palestinian literature]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070401004645/http://adab.chez-alice.fr/Samed/sahar.htm Bio-bibliography (in French) on the site Samed devoted to palestinian literature]
*[http://www.arabworldbooks.com/authors/sahar_khalifa.html Arab World Books]
*[http://www.arabworldbooks.com/authors/sahar_khalifa.html Arab World Books]
*al-Mallah, Ahmad. "Sahar Khalifa." Twentieth-Century Arabic Writers. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 346. Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Gale. 17 Mar. 2009 [http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=wylrc_park Gale Literature Resource Center]
*al-Mallah, Ahmad. "Sahar Khalifa." Twentieth-Century Arabic Writers. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 346. Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Gale. 17 Mar. 2009 [http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=wylrc_park Gale Literature Resource Center]
*[http://en.qantara.de/An-Appeal-to-the-West/16303c16506i1p77/index.html Who Is Hidden beneath the Burqa? An Appeal to the West] by Sahar Khalifa
*[http://en.qantara.de/An-Appeal-to-the-West/16303c16506i1p77/index.html Who Is Hidden beneath the Burqa? An Appeal to the West] by Sahar Khalifa

==References==
{{Reflist}}


{{Authority control}}
{{Authority control}}


{{DEFAULTSORT:Khalifa, Sahar}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Khalifa, Sahar}}
[[Category:Palestinian feminists]]
[[Category:Palestinian women writers]]
[[Category:Feminist writers]]
[[Category:1942 births]]
[[Category:1942 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Palestinian feminists]]
[[Category:Feminist writers]]
[[Category:People from Nablus]]
[[Category:People from Nablus]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature]]
[[Category:Birzeit University alumni]]
[[Category:Birzeit University alumni]]
[[Category:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni]]
[[Category:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni]]
[[Category:University of Iowa alumni]]
[[Category:University of Iowa alumni]]
[[Category:International Writing Program alumni]]
[[Category:International Writing Program alumni]]
[[Category:Fulbright Scholars]]


{{Palestine-writer-stub}}
[[Category:Palestinian novelists]]
[[Category:Palestinian novelists]]
[[Category:Palestinian writers]]
[[Category:Palestinian women novelists]]
[[Category:21st-century Palestinian women writers]]
[[Category:21st-century Palestinian women writers]]
[[Category:21st-century Palestinian writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Palestinian women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Palestinian women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Palestinian writers]]
[[Category:Arab people in Mandatory Palestine]]

Latest revision as of 15:08, 30 October 2024

Sahar Khalifeh
سحر خليفة
Born1941
Occupation(s)writer, novelist, feminist
AwardsNaguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

Sahar Khalifeh (Arabic: سحر خليفة) (born 1941) is a Palestinian writer.[1] She has written eleven novels, which have been translated into English, French, Hebrew, German, Spanish, and many other languages. One of her best-known works is the novel Wild Thorns (1976). She has won international prizes, including the 2006 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, for The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant.[2] Khalifeh obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Birzeit University, Palestine.

Biography

[edit]

Sahar Khalifeh was born in Nablus, British Mandate Palestine, the fifth of eight daughters. Khalifeh reflects “I learned that I was a member of a miserable, useless, worthless sex. From childhood, I was taught to prepare myself for the risks associated with being a woman.”[3]

In childhood, Khalifeh found creative outlets like reading, writing, and painting. She was married off against her will shortly after finishing high school in Amman, Jordan. She describes her 13-year marriage as “miserable and devastating” and did not write during this period. She once again found refuge in books: “I indulged, just like anybody else in the educated Arab world, in the existentialist movement and existential intellectualism. Until the Occupation took place, I continued to be an existentialist.”[4]

After the 1967 defeat of Jordan and subsequent Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Khalifeh began writing again. She began with “resistance poetry”, inspired by the works of Mahmoud Darwish before breaking from the limited female narratives typical in resistance literature. Her first novel, After the Defeat, followed the interactions of families in a Nablus apartment building after the war. The only manuscript of this novel was confiscated by Israeli authorities and never published. Khalifeh continued writing and We Are Not Your Slaves Any Longer, was published in 1974, followed by her best-known novel, Wild Thorns, in 1976. Wild Thorns explored class nuances under Israeli occupation. She published The Sunflower in 1980 as a sequel to Wild Thorns to focus on female narratives that were largely absent from the original story. In her autobiography, A Novel for My Story, she describes beginning life as a university student at the age of thirty-two alongside two other friends from Nablus.[5]

She continued her education in the U.S., receiving a Fulbright scholarship to complete her MA in English from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She received her Ph.D. in Women's studies and American literature from the University of Iowa. She returned to Nablus in 1988 after the start of the first intifada and began writing Bab al-Saha (Passage to the Plaza), a novel depicting women's lives against the background of the Intifada. In 1988, Khalifeh also founded the Women's Affairs Center in Nablus. She describes her work with women in Nablus in an interview with Penny Johnson “I didn't bring an image of an institution from abroad. I learned from ‘reality.’” Khalifeh has since opened Women’s Affairs Center branches in Gaza City, West Bank, and Amman, Jordan[citation needed].

Khalifeh has continued writing, one of her recent publications أصلٌ وفصل (Root and Branch) was published in 2009 by Dar al-Adeb and translated into English as Of Noble Origins in 2012. This novel, set on the eve of the Nakba of 1948 & the state of Israel’s establishment, explores the stories of characters confronting the British Mandate and the Zionist movement. Khalifeh’s most recent publication of 2010 My First and Only Love follows the story of a Palestinian woman who, after many years in exile, returns home to Nablus.[6] This novel was published in English by Hoopoe in March 2021. Khalifeh has published eleven novels, all of which deal with the situation of the Palestinians under occupation.[citation needed]

Selected works

[edit]

Publications by Khalifeh

[edit]

The following novels are available in translation into English:

  • Wild Thorns. Interlink. 2000. OCLC 42581514.
  • The Inheritance. Translated by Bamia, Aida A. American University in Cairo Press. 2005. OCLC 62887830.
  • The End of Spring. Translated by Haydar, Paula. Interlink. 2008. OCLC 154799504.
  • The Image, the Icon and the Covenant. Translated by Bamia, Aida A. Interlink. 2008. OCLC 147985601.
  • Of Noble Origins. Translated by Bamia, Aida A. American University in Cairo Press. 2012. OCLC 748331417.
  • Passage to the Plaza. Translated by Hussain, Sawad. Seagull Books. 2020. OCLC 1139137431.
  • My First and Only Love. Translated by Bamia, Aida A. Hoopoe. 2021. OCLC 1250276496.

Other novels not translated into English:

  • Lam na’ud ghawārī lakum لم نعد جواري لكم [We Are not Your Slave Girls Anymore]. Dar al-Adab. 1974.
  • Abbad al-Shams عباد الشمس [The Sunflower]. Dar al-Adab. 1980.
  • Mudhakkirāt imra’ah ghayr wāqi’īyah مذكرات امرأة غير واقعية [Memoirs of an Unrealistic Woman]. Dar al-Adab. 1986.
  • Rabi’ Harr ربيع حار [Hot Spring]. Dar al-Adab. 2004.

Publications with contributions by Khalifeh

[edit]
  • Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature by Salma Jayyusi (Columbia University Press), contains excerpts of her earlier work[citation needed]

Awards

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Sahar Khalifeh". International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  2. ^ "Sahar Khalifeh". Hoopoe. Retrieved 28 July 2021.[dead link]
  3. ^ Khalifeh, Sahar. "My Life, Myself, and the World". Al Jadid. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  4. ^ Johnson, Penny; Khalifeh, Sahar (July 1990). "Uprising of a Novelist: Penny Johnson Interviews Sahar Khalifeh". The Women's Review of Books. 7 (10/11): 24. doi:10.2307/4020815. ISSN 0738-1433. JSTOR 4020815.
  5. ^ Khalifeh, Sahar (18 March 2020). "University Student". Words Without Borders. Retrieved 16 August 2021.
  6. ^ "the glasshouse novel 1936". kfresh.ca. Archived from the original on 16 August 2021. Retrieved 16 August 2021.
  7. ^ "Palestinian female novelist granted Naguib Mahfouz medal in Cairo". Xinhua News Agency. 11 December 2006.
  8. ^ "The Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature". American University in Cairo. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  9. ^ Irving, Sarah (1 July 2013). "Palestinian novelist Sahar Khalifeh awarded Moroccan literary prize". The Electronic Intifada. Retrieved 29 November 2018.
[edit]