Angele Botros Samaan (1923-2011) was an Egyptian academic and translator. She obtained a BA (Hons) and an MA degree from Cairo University and later served as a professor in the university’s English department for many years. She obtained her PhD from London University in 1962, with a thesis entitled The Novel of Utopianism and Prophecy From Lytton (1871) to Orwell (1949) With Special Reference to Its Reception. Her supervisor was Professor Tillotson. She then returned to Cairo and worked at Cairo University for many years in the Department of English Literature and Language. She specialized in the English novel starting from the 19th century until modern novel. She supervised many Masters and PhD theses.
She published critical articles in Egypt and abroad in the areas of the English novel, particularly the modern novel, the Arabic and African novel in addition to Utopian writings, translation and women studies both in English and Arabic. She wrote a number of books and scholarly articles in both English and Arabic.
She is best known as the co-translator (with William M. Hutchins) of Sugar Street, the third volume of the Cairo Trilogy by Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. She also translated Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Thomas More’s Utopia from English to Arabic.
A festschrift in her honour was published in 1995, under the title Essays in Honour of Angele B. Samaan.
Publications
In Arabic
Bayn al-riwā’i wa al-riwāyah (The Novel and the Novelist), Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, Cairo 1972
The English Novel, 1977
Studies in the English Novel, 1981
Studies in the Arabic Novel, 1987
In English
Views on the art of the Novel, Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, Cairo 1965
C.S. Lewis: The Utopianist and His Critics, 1966, Cairo Studies in English pp. 137–166
Critical introductions to : Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1970
Utopias and Utopian Novels, 1516-1949, A Preliminary Bibliography, Moreana, Angers, Nov. 1971
James Joyce, A portrait of the Artist as A Young Man, 1977, 1987
The English novel in Arabic Translation: 1940-1973, A preliminary Bibliography, « Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, XXXII, 1978, pp. 85–128
Essay on George Eliot The Developing Image of the Heroine, Centenary Essays on George Eliot. Ed. Magdi Wahba. Cairo: Cairo Studies in English, 1981. pp. 119–174.
News From Egypt, Moreana XIX, pp. 75–76 (Nov.1982), p. 111-112
Death and the Death-Penalty in More’s Utopia and Some Utopian Novels, Moreana 23.90 (June 1986): pp. 5–15
D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, 1990
Arabic Literature in Egypt in English Translation : A Bibliography, Compiled by Angele Botros Samaan
Women in Society : Egypt, Singapore Times Publishing, 1993
A voice of their Own: Short Stories by Egyptian Women, Cairo:Prism Publications, Prism Literary Series #4, Published by Foreign Cultural Information Dept. 1994, 1998
Review in Utopian Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 1995, pp. 121–123.
Translations into Arabic
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, 1971
Thomas More, Utopia, trans.Yūtubyā or Ūtūbyah, ed. Cairo: Dar el-Maaref, 1974, 1987, 2021
Translations into English
Nehad Gad, Adila and The Bus Stop : Two One-Act Plays, General Egyptian Book Organization, Cairo, 1987
Naguib Mahfouz, Al-Sukkaria (Sugar Street), 1992
