Married to the Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, mother of the poet Tamim Barghouti, and a professor of English literature at Ain Shams University, Ashour produced both fiction and influential criticism. Her best-known novel is the three-volume Granada sequence (1994–95), a fictionalised history of the last Muslims of Granada from the fall of the city in 1492 through their expulsion and forced conversion. The novel anchored a wave of Arabic fiction reckoning with the Andalusian past as an unfinished story.
Recurring themes
the long Andalusian aftermath
the historical novel as political form
the Egyptian academic novel
Palestine in the Egyptian voice
Selected works
- 1994Granada
- 1995Maryama and the Departure
- 1999Specters
- 2010Tantoura
- 2013Heavier than Radwa