ALIFA RIFAAT

Fatimah Abdullah Rifaat (1930-1996), better known by her pen name Alifa Rifaat, was an Egyptian author. Her fiction touched on the dynamics of female sexuality, relationships, and loss in rural Egyptian culture. She wrote in Arabic, and her work has been translated into many international languages. Pundits insist that her stories did not attempt to undermine the patriarchal system; rather they were used to depict the problems and hypocrisies entrenched in a patriarchal society.

Fatimah was raised in provincial Egypt and spent most of her life there. Subsequently rural Egypt became the setting for most of her stories. Fatimah who began to write at a very early age was educated at The Cultural Center for Women and the British Institute in Cairo from 1946 to 1949 where she studied English. As a married woman, despite frustrations over the years she wrote and published her work. She was a member of the Federation of Egyptian Writers, the Short-Story Club, and the Dar al-Udaba (Egypt). In 1984 Fatimah Rifaat received the Excellency Award from the Modern Literature Assembly. She died in 1996.

Her works include: "Eve Returns to Adam" (1975) , "Who Can Man Be?" (1981), The prayer of Love" (1983), Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories (1983), "On a Long Winter’s Night" (1980) , The Pharaoh’s Jewel (1991), and the unfinished House in the Land of the Dead.

Studies:

Feminist issues and concerns in the fictions of two Egyptian women
writers : Alifa Rifaat and Nawal El-Saadawi by Shafiqa Anwar Fakir

Islamic culture and the question of women's human rights in North
Africa : a study of short stories by Assia Djebar and Alifa Rifaat by
Naomi Epongse Nkealah

Patriarchal and Alternative Worlds in Alifa Rifaat's "My World of the
Unknown", Ismat Chughtai's "the Guilt" and Khalida Hussain's
"messenger"