Salwa Bakr -- novelist

In a country famed for its rich modern literary tradition, Salwa Bakr has become one of Egypt's most respected novelists and short story writers. Born in Cairo in 1949, Ms Bakr took degrees in business management and literary criticism before embarking on a career in journalism. She has published three collections of short stories and two novels.

Her satirical novel The Golden Chariot (1991) is set within the walls of a women's prison located outside Cairo during the Nasser era. It focuses on a member of the Alexandrian aristocracy imprisoned for murder and, according to Latifah al-Zayat, is written in a style "similar to the style of folk-tales (al-haki al-sha'bi) which depends on digression, description, accumulation of seemingly separate details, and turning dramatic events into narrative." It is a novel of narrative sophistication which was widely praised in its original Arabic publication and has since been translated into English and other European languages.

Salwa Bakr's short stories were awarded a major prize for fiction by the German national radio in 1993.