Bahaa Taher was born in 1935 in Cairo, Egypt. Shortly after graduating from the University of Cairo, he started work at Radio 2, the culture channel of Egyptian Radio and in 1964 he published his first short story. Bahaa was active in left-wing and avant-garde literary circles of the 1960s and was one of the writers of the Gallery 68 movement. A storyteller and social commentator, Taher lost his job in radio broadcasting and was prevented from publishing in the mid 1970s in Sadat's Egypt. In 1981 he chose to leave for Geneva to work as a translator for the United Nations. After many years of exile in Switzerland, he has recently returned to Egypt and is very active in all cultural circles. He has received much recognition in the last five years. Apart from the translation into English of two of his novels, his collected works were published in Cairo by Dar al Hilal in 1992, and in 1995 a film was made about him as a leading member of the 60s generation by Jamil 'At iyyat lbrahim. Quickly becoming one of the most widely read contemporary novelists in the Arab world, in 1998 Taher received the State's Award of Merit in Literature, the highest honour the Egyptian establishment can confer on a writer.In 2000 he was awarded the prestigious Italian Guiseppe Acerbi prize for his widely acclaimed novel Khalti Safiya wal Dier (My Aunt Safiya and the Monastery). In 2008 he was awarded the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel, Sunset Oasis. (Sceptre, UK, September 09)
Bibliography:
East of the Palms (1985)
Qalat Duha (1985)
Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery (1991)
Love in Exile (1995)
Sunset Oasis (2007)
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