The Orchards of Basra, 2021 Longlist
Mansoura Ez Eldin is an Egyptian novelist and short story writer, born in 1976. Her works have been translated into more than ten languages and in 2009 she was selected as one of the best 39 Arab writers under 40 by the Beirut 39 project. She is the author of three short story collections: Shaken Light (2001), Towards Madness (2013) and Shelter of Absence (2018), and numerous novels, including: Mariam's Maze (2004), Beyond Paradise (2009), IPAF-shortlisted in 2010 and translated into Dutch, German and Italian, Emerald Mountain (2014), Shadow Play (2017) and The Orchards of Basra (2020), IPAF-longlisted in 2021 and published in English by Interlink. Her work has been acknowledged by awards at Cairo Book Fair and Sharjah Book Fair, as well as the Al-Multaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. She was a mentor of the annual IPAF Nadwa (writing workshop) in 2010 and 2011. Her articles have been published in the New York Times, Granta, A Public Space, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). She currently works as deputy editor of the Egyptian weekly cultural magazine Akhbar al-Adab, and editor of its books section.
