Alawiyya Sobh

Alawiyya Sobh, born in Beirut in 1955, is a Lebanese writer and journalist. She studied Arabic and English literature at the University of Beirut and began writing for numerous Lebanese newspapers in the early 1980s. In 1986, she became editor-in-chief of the Arabic women’s magazine al-Hasna; in 1990, she founded the women’s and family magazine Snob. Her literary debut, Naum al-Ayyam, was published in 1987. She gained wider recognition with her 2002 novel Maryam al-hakaya, published in German as Marjams Geschichten, which received the Sultan Qaboos Award in 2006. The novel attracted attention in the Arab world for its frank portrayal of sexuality and was translated into several languages.