The Woman from Tantoura: A Novel from Palestine
Ruqayya was only thirteen when the Nakba came to her village in Palestine in 1948. The massacre in Tantoura drove her from her home and from everything she had ever known. She had not left her village before, but she would never return. Now an old woman, Ruqayya looks back on a long life in exile, one that has taken her to Syria, Lebanon, the Gulf, and given her children and grandchildren. Through her depth of experience and her indomitable spirit, we live her love of her land, her family, and her people, and we feel the repeated pain of loss and of diaspora.
A moving and poignant account of the Palestinian Nakba and life in the diaspora by a writer of exceptional integrity and courageThe Guardian
Ruqayya, a woman only 13 years old when the 1948 Nakba (the catastrophe) came and destroyed her village of Tantoura in Palestine. Ashour tells this story through the eyes of Ruqayya as an old woman looking back on her long life in exile. This is a novel about her strength, courage, survival, and the repeating pain of loss.
Radwa Ashour (1946-2014) is a highly acclaimed Egyptian writer and scholar. She is the author of more than fifteen works of fiction, memoir, and criticism, including Granada (AUC Press, 2008) and Specters (AUC Press, 2010), and was a recipient of the Constantine Cavafy Prize for Literature and the prestigious Owais Prize for Fiction.
Kay Heikkinen is a translator and academic who holds a PhD from Harvard University and is currently Ibn Rushd Lecturer of Arabic at the University of Chicago. Among other books, she translated Naguib Mahfouzs In the Time of Love (AUC Press, 2010).
