Saïd Khatibi Author

Saïd Khatibi is a novelist, travel writer, translator and cultural journalist, born in 1984 in Bou Saada, Algeria. He writes in Arabic and French and translates between both. He has a BA in French Literature from the University of Algiers and an MA in Cultural Studies from the Sorbonne. He has three novels in Arabic: Sarajevo Firewood, which was shortlisted for the 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Kitab al-Khataya (Book of Errors) Editions ANEP, 2013, and (Forty Years Waiting for Isabelle), 2016, about the real-life Swiss traveller Isabelle Eberhardt (1877−1904), for which he won the 2018 Katara Award for the Novel. His travel book about the Balkans, (The Inflamed Gardens of the East), 2015, was excerpted in Banipal 66 (2019). He lives in Slovenia. Paul Starkey is an award-winning translator and Emeritus Professor of Arabic, Durham University, UK. His most recent literary translations are Praise for the Women of the Family by Mahmoud Shukair, Fractured Destinies by Rabai Al-Madhoun, and The Shell by Mustafa Khalifa, for which he won the 2017 Hamad Translation Award. Other translations include works by Youssef Rakha (The Book of the Sultan’s Seal), Adania Shibli (We Are All Equally Far From Love), Rashid al-Daif (Dear Mr Kawabata), Edwar al-Kharrat (Stones of Bobello), Turki al-Hamad (Shumaisi), Mansoura Ez Eldin (Maryam’s Maze), Jurji Zaydan (Saladin and the Assassins) and Mahdi Issa al-Saqr (East Winds, West Winds).