Radwa Ashour is an Egyptian novelist, critic and academic. Professor of English at Ain Shams University, Cairo, she is author of four books of literary criticism and co-editor of the four-volume Encyclopaedia of Arab Women Writers, 1873-1999. She has written three collections of short stories and seven novels, of which the best known is her Granada trilogy, which tells the story of the last years of the taifa state of Granada, the last outpost of al-Andalus (Islamic medieval Spain). Part I, Granada, won the Cairo International Book Fair Book of the Year award in 1994, and was published in English by Syracuse University Press. Her latest translations include Midnight, a book of poetry by Mourid Barghouti.

More extended profiles of Radwa Ashour are available from the English Pen World Atlas and Al-Ahram Weekly.

Among translations of her novels in English, Spectres is reviewed in The Independent, and an extended description of Siraaj, translated by Barbara Romaine, is available from the University of Texas Press.

Radwa Ashour talks with well-known writers Githa Hariharan and Ahdaf Souief about engaging with political issues through literature here.