Background

Bahaa Taher was born in 1935 in Cairo, Egypt.

Education

Bahaa Taher Graduated from Cairo University.

Career

Bahaa Taher spent many years of self-exile in Geneva, Switzerland, where he worked as a translator for the United Nations. His writings became more widely known in the 1990s when they appeared in English translation. Besides, Taher was a contributor of short stories to periodicals, Mukhtarat Fusul and Matbu'at al-Jadid.

After graduating, Taher started working on cultural programming for Egypt's Radio 2 and became a storyteller and commentator. He published his first short story in 1964 and was part of left-wing and avant-garde literary circles, including the Gallery 68 movement. During the mid-1970s, political repression under the Sadat administration ended Taher's broadcast career and his publishing opportunities in Egypt. He moved to Geneva in 1981, where he worked as a translator for the United Nations and did not return to Egypt until sometime after 1996.

Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery and Love in Exile indirectly address cultural and political troubles in Taher's homeland through stories that are geographically distant from Egypt's social and political centers. Both novels are dark depictions of personal crisis but reflect on larger issues such as tensions between tradition and modernization and the interplay betwixt personal and political aspects of life.

The translation of Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery furthered Bahaa Taher's reputation with its graceful style and thoughtful exploration of religious conflict in the Middle East. The novel is a realistic portrayal of dispute within a remote village in Upper Egypt where Muslims and Christians have lived together for centuries. Aunt Safiyya is a Muslim woman. She follows the ancient tradition of the blood feud that to revenge for the death of her husband. Her husband's killer, however, was himself an undeserving victim of torture who acted in self-defense. The narrator's father, also a Muslim, and a monk from the Coptic monastery devise a plan to protect the man behind its walls. Later, the narrator is brought to tears when he recognizes a man's mournful voice singing in the night.

The subject of displacement is central to Love in Exile. The protagonist, like Taher, has been forced out of Egypt because of his political views. He comes to live and work in a European city. The unnamed man is a journalist. He is happy because of a sense of freedom from reminders of his divorce and the disappointments of being a socialist and supporter of former president Nasser. However, he is also unhappily disconnected from his new surroundings and current political events. He finds some solace in an affair with a young Austrian woman and is stirred to protest the 1982 Israeli occupation of Lebanon. As the journalist prepares to write a story on the subject, a stroke incapacitates him, and he is subsequently ordered to avoid anything, including the news, that will upset him.

Achievements

• Bahaa Taher is best known as a writer. Dozens of his works are published in Egypt in Arabic and translated into many languages. During the 1990s, he received increased attention on an international scale as the subject of a 1995 film by Jamil Atiyyat Ibrahim that focuses on Taher's activism in the 1960s, and as the recipient of Egypt's highest literary award, the State Award of Merit in Literature in 1998 and the Italian Giuseppe Acerbi Prize for Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery in 2000. Moreover, Bahaa Taher became the first winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for Sunset Oasis in 2008.

Works

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• book

  • As Doha Said

    (In this sophisticated, richly textured novel, the author ...)

    2008
  • Love In Exile

    (Unwilling to recant his Nasserist beliefs, the unnamed na...)

    1995
  • Sunset Oasis

    (Sunset Oasis is an enthralling story of mystery and frust...)

    2006
  • Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery

    (This brief, beautifully crafted novel introduces one of t...)

    1996

Politics

Bahaa Taher was a supporter of left-wing causes and Gamal Abdel Nasser's development program for Egypt. He thinks that Anwar El Sadat's ending of this policy has been a catastrophe for Egypt. Taher considers himself a pan-Arabist however, he does not see much good in the Arab regimes of now. He assumes that Westerners want to see exoticism, gender discrimination, and problems between minorities in the works of Arab writers, but he refuses to comply with these stereotypes.

Membership

• Gallery 68 movement , Egypt

Interests

• Politicians

  Hamdeen Sabahi, Gamal Abdel Nasser

Connections

Bahaa Taher was married.