Somaya Ramadan

Somaya Yehia Ramadan (1951 - 20 August 2024) was an Egyptian academic, translator and writer. She is mainly known for her 2001 novel Awraq Al-Nargis, published in English as Leaves of Narcissus that won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature and for her Arabic translation of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.

Ramadan was born in Cairo in 1951 and studied English literature at Cairo University. Subsequently, she obtained a PhD in English from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1983.^[1]

Ramadan's first two books were short story collections: Khashab wa Nahass (Wood and Brass) and Manazil al-Qamar (Phases of the Moon). Her first novel Awraq Al-Nargis (Leaves of Narcissus) published in 2001, set largely in Ireland and centred aroung the notion of exile, won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.^[2] It was translated into English by Marilyn Booth and published in 2006 by AUC Press.^[3] The same year, a French translation was published as Feuilles de Narcisse.^[4] Commenting on her literary technique and narrative style, the jury for this prestigious Egyptian literary prize wrote:^[5]

The novel is supremely complex, with modernist techniques pushed to the utmost, and thus maintaining all along a superb and vibrant creative tension. … Marked by a hallucinating and captivating narration, this is liminal writing par excellence: writing while gazing at the abyss of being.

Ramadan also worked extensively as a translator. Among her translations is Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Further, she was a founding member of the Women and Memory Forum, a non-profit organisation, and taught English and Translation at the National Academy of Arts in Cairo.^[5]

Ramadan was an Egyptian Baha'i and author of a non-fiction book, where she tried to clarify common misunderstandings about this faith.^[6] She died on 19 August 2024, at the age of 73.^[7]

Ramadan's works include:

• Khashab wa-nuḥās (Wood and Brass), short stories,1995
• Manāzil al-Qamar (Phases of the Moon), short stories, 1999
• Awraq al-Nargis, novel, 2001 Leaves of Narcissus, translated by Marilyn Booth, Cairo: AUC Press, ISBN 9789774160585.
• Ṭarīq al-mustaqbal: ruʼyah Bahāʼīyah' (Path of the Future: Baha'i Faith), non-fiction work

• Muhammad Birairi (2002). "فعل الكتابة وسؤال الوجود: قراءة في أوراق سمية رمضان النرجسية / Writing and Being: A Reading of Somaya Ramadan's Leaves of Narcissus". Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics (22). Cairo: The American University in Cairo: 94–113. doi:10.2307/1350064. JSTOR 1350064. Retrieved 30 October 2020.