Mansoura Ez-Eldin (Mansura Ezeddin) is an Egyptian novelist and journalist who was born in the Nile Delta, 1976.
She published her first collection of short stories, Flickering Light, in 2001. This was followed by six novels and two collections of short stories and a book of travel writing about her two trips to China: “Maryam's Maze” in 2004, “Beyond Paradise” in 2009, “The Path to Madness” in 2013, “Emerald Mountain” in 2014, “Shadow Specters” in 2017, “A Haven for the absence” in 2018, “The Orchards of Basra” in 2020, “Walks in Shanghai: On the Meaning of the Distance between Egypt and China” in 2021 and “Atlas of the Invisible” in 2022.
Her work has been translated into a number of languages, including an English translation of “Maryam's Maze” by the American University in Cairo (AUC) Press, which came out in 2007. In 2009, she was selected for the Beirut39, as one of the 39 best Arab authors below the age of 40. Her second novel, “Beyond Paradise”, was shortlisted for the prestigious Arabic Booker prize 2010, and is translated into Italian (Piemme-Mondadori, 2011) and German (Unions Verlag, 2011).
Her collection of short stories, “The Path to Madness” won the award of the best Egyptian collection of short stories from Cairo International Book Fair 2013 and her Novel, “Emerald Mountain” won the award of the best Arabic novel in 2014 from Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) and is translated into French (Actes Sud, 2017) and “Shadow Specters” was translated into The Serbian language (Geopoetica 2019) and was shortlisted for Miloš Đurić Prize for literary translation issued by the Serbian Association of literary translators. Her novel “The Orchards of Basra” was longlisted for the Arabic Booker Prize 2021 and its French translation is due to be out soon by Actes Sud.
Her collection of short stories “A haven for the absence” (Shelter of Absence) was shortlisted for the prestigious Al-Multaqa Prize for Arabic short story 2018 and Sheikh Zayed Award for literature 2020.
Ez-Eldin’s book “Walks in Shanghai: on the meaning of distance between Egypt and China” won the Ibn Battuta Prize for travel literature 2021.
Beyond Paradise book of the month June 2012 - special file and readers' comments
