Sharif Hatata or Sherif Hetata (Arabic: شريف حتاتة; 13 September 1923 – 22 May 2017) was an Egyptian doctor, author and communist activist.
Sherif Youssef Hetata was a novelist and medical doctor. He occupied various posts and functions since he graduated from the medical college with honors in 1946. These included a period of eight years with the International Labour Organization in Asia, then in Africa. During that period he was Head of a Team of Experts on Population and Migration.
He has written on many subjects including travel, politics and health, but since 1968 has devoted himself to novels. He has translated some of his own works as well as some of the works of Nawal El Saadawi into English. He was Assistant Editor of the magazine, Health, in the early 1970s and of the feminist magazine, Noon, in the early nineties.
He has travelled extensively in Europe, Africa, Asia and the United States, and has participated in many conferences and carried out lecture tours in various countries.
In Egypt he was a member of the Board of the Medical Syndicate and participated in founding the Association for Health Education in 1969, and the Arab Women's Solidarity Association in 1982. He spoke and wrote Arabic, English and French fluently.
He worked for nine years in the Egyptian government service. First in the Ministry of Health planning and organizing primary health care services in rural areas, then in the planning department of the public sector drug industry, and lastly in the Supreme Council for Population and Family Planning. During the last period he attended several regional conferences on population and migration, spent three months at Chicago University in an exchange program, and participated in negotiations with the World Bank.
Half of his period with the ILO was spent in Asia and the other half in Africa.
In Asia he was based in New Delhi and was responsible for developing projects on population and migration with the concerned government authorities in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He travelled extensively especially in India where he visited most of the states. He worked closely with high level government officials, parliamentarians, university professors, research institutes, political parties, trade unions and non-governmental organization. During this period he also travelled to Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. Many of these travels and experiences are reflected in his book, "The Way of Salt and Love." During this period ten projects related to population and migration were developed, and assisted by his office in the ILO. In Africa he was based in Addis Ababa and travelled extensively in Saharan Africa where he visited twelve countries in both the Eastern, Southern and Western parts of the continent.
He worked for several years at the head of a task force in the Egyptian Medical Syndicate on policies and plans related to primary health care and health insurance and his professional experience in this area was reflected in his book, "Health and Development." (Dar El Maaref Publishing House, 1968.)
There are many reviews of his works in the Arabic press and some in the English press but these are documented at home in Egypt.
He has attended several international writers' conferences in Helsinki, London, Johannesburg, and Copenhagen. He received the Gold Medal of the Faculty of Medicine in Physiology. He has lectured in many universities including Cambridge, Norwich, Sussex, London, Amsterdam, Harvard, North Carolina State University, Chicago University and others. He has given public lectures in many countries of the world and has taught for two semesters at Duke University, and one semester at the University of Washington in Seattle. The courses were on creativity, resistance literature and the Arab World and Women.
Hatata was married to the prominent Egyptian feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi until 2010; the couple met in 1964. They lived in Cairo, but built a small house in Hatata's home village where they traveled to a number of times a year. The couple had one son, Atef, who is a film director in Egypt.
