Egyptian author Alifa Rifaat has been honoured as today’s Google Doodle, on what would have been her 91st birthday on June 5.
The writer was born Fatimah Rifaat, but known by her pen name Alifa Rifaat, in Cairo, Egypt, in 1930. She died in Cairo on January 1, 1996, aged 65.
She left behind three sons and a body of more than 100 works that have been translated into multiple languages.
She was known for her feminist writing; Distant View of a Minaret, Bahiyya’s Eyes and My World of the Unknown are three of her best-known works. In her early career, her writing focused mainly on romance, but the theme shifted to social critique in her later career.
The Google Doodle is being shown on the search engine’s homepage in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the UAE.
Rifaat wrote her first short story at the age of 9, and, at the time, her older sister reprimanded her for her writing.
At the beginning of her career, from 1955 to 1960, Rifaat wrote her stories under a pseudonym. However, her husband did not approve of her work, and she stopped releasing anything for more than a decade.
However, in 1983 she published a collection of 15 short stories, Distant View of Minaret.
In 1984, the Modern Literature Assembly honoured Rifaat with the Excellency Award.
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