Ahdaf Soueif is the author of the bestselling The Map of Love which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1999.
Ms Soueif is also a political and cultural commentator; she writes regularly for the Guardian in London and has a weekly column for al-Shorouk in Cairo.
A collection of her essays, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground, was published in 2004.
Her translation (from Arabic into English) of Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah also came out in 2004.
She lives in London and Cairo.
Courtesy of Ahdaf Soueif's Official Site.