Kamal Abu-Deeb is Emeritus professor of Arabic in the University of London where he held the Chair of Arabic from 1992-2008 and founded and chaired the graduate programme in comparative literature devoted to the non-western worlds at SOAS. He is now visiting professor at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London (Agha Khan University).
He was educated at schools in safita, at Damascus University, Trinity College and St. John’s College, Oxford University where he obtained his D.Phil in 1971.
He has taught at Oxford, Pennsylvania, Berkeley, Columbia, Dartmouth college and at Yarmouk and San’a in the Arab world. His work has been translated into a number of languages and a large number of studies, books and phd theses have been written about his work as a leading literary/cultural critic. He has won many prestigious fellowships, research awards and prizes in the Arab world and outside it. He has also published poetry and fiction. His latest work is a play within a play called Four Faces of Godot and Two Faces of Elda. Together with Adonis and a small band of leading figures, he edited the avant guarde journal Mawaqif. He has translated into Arabic Edward Said’s books Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, Shakespeare’s Sonnets and a considerable number of poems by leading European poets. And his work as a translator has provoked as much controversy and interest as his work as a critic and poet. His latest book of poetry is Mu’allaqat al-Addad 2021).
He is married and has two daughters and a granddaughter. He was born in 1942 in Safita, Syria and has lived in Oxford since 1965.
