Alifa Rifaat – Google celebrates Egyptian feminist author’s 91st birthday with Doodle

Google Doodle celebrates the 91st birthday of an Egyptian feminist author Alifa Rifaat (أليفة رفعت‎), whose real name was Fatimah Rifaat but better known by her pen name Alifa, on June 5, 2021.

Who was Alifa Rifaat (أليفة رفعت‎)?

Fatma Abdullah Rifaat was born on June 5, 1930, in Cairo, Egypt. Fatimah Rifaat was better known by her pen name Alifa Rifaat (أليفة رفعت‎). Her controversial short stories are prestigious for their portrayals of the dynamics of female sexuality, relationships, and misfortune in rural Egyptian culture.

Alifa Rifaat (أليفة رفعت‎) was brought up in provincial Egypt and spent the majority of her life there. Thusly, rural Egypt became the setting for the majority of her stories. Her active interest in writing started at age nine when she composed a poem expressing the depression in her town. For this, she was met with punishment by her family because of the poem’s topic.

Alifa Rifaat went to Misr al-Jadidah Primary school and The Cultural Center for Women for her intermediate education. She likewise went to the British Institute in Cairo from 1946 to 1949 where she studied English. At the point when Alifa Rifaat expressed interest in proceeding with her education by enrolling in the College of Fine Arts in Egypt her dad rather arranged for her to marry her cousin, a police officer.

For the initial few years of their marriage, Alifa Rifaat’s husband permitted her to compose and publish stories under her pen name the regular thought of composing being an absolutely manly field in Egyptian culture. She published her stories from 1955 until 1960 when she decided to prevent after confronting pressure from her husband to end her writing career.

During this almost 14-year period of literary silence, Alifa Rifaat pursued the study of literature, astronomy, and history. Regardless of her attempts at preoccupation through these means, Alifa Rifaat stayed disappointed at her powerlessness to express her thoughts and the societal issues she faced as a woman through literary means.

In 1973, in the wake of confronting a genuine sickness, Alifa Rifaat’s husband permitted her again to compose and publish her work. She forged ahead to publish a collection of short stories and two novels starting with the short story “My World of the Unknown,” for which she acquired beginning popularity.

Alifa Rifaat’s husband passed on in 1979. Even though she traveled across provincial Egypt as per her across provincial for work she never left Egypt until after his demise. She forged ahead to make the [hajj], the sacrosanct journey to Mecca, in 1981 and traveled to numerous European and Arab states including England, Turkey, Germany, Morocco, and Austria.

For the duration of her life, Fatimah Rifaat became a member of the Federation of Egyptian Writers, the Short-Story Club, and the Dar al-Udaba (Egypt). She additionally went to the First International Women’s Book Fair (London, England) in 1984 where she talked about the rights of women in Islam and the subject of polygamy.

In 1984, Alifa Rifaat got the Excellency Award from the Modern Literature Assembly out of appreciation for her more than 100 published works, a large number of which have been translated into various languages and read on major international media outlets.

Alifa Rifaat (أليفة رفعت‎) wrote in Arabic all through her literary career. Her style, however focusing additional on romance toward the start of her career, later moved to social study after she met translator Denys John-Davies.

Alifa Rifaat’s novels and short stories have been translated into numerous languages including English, German, Dutch, and Swedish. The most well-known English translation of her work is of her collection of short stories, Distant View of a Minaret and Other Short Stories, which is translated by Denys Johnson-Davies.

Alifa Rifaat (أليفة رفعت‎) died at 65 years old in January 1996. She left behind three sons and a body of more than 100 works that have been translated into various languages and have been produced for TV. Some of her works have likewise been read on BBC.

On June 5, 2021, Google observes Alifa Rifaat’s 91st Birthday with a Google Doodle.