Bahaa Taher (13 January 1935 – 27 October 2022), sometimes transliterated as Bahaa Tahir, Baha Taher, or Baha Tahir, was an Egyptian novelist and short story writer who wrote in Arabic. He was awarded the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2008.

Biography

Taher was born in Giza Governorate on 13 January 1935, with roots from Luxor in Upper Egypt. He had a bachelor's degree in history, literature faculty in 1956, then a postgraduate diploma in media from the University of Cairo in 1973. He was one of the Egyptian artists who contributed to the avant-garde literary magazine Galerie 68. Upon being banned from writing in 1975, he left Egypt and travelled widely in Africa and Asia seeking work as a translator. During the 1980s and 1990s he lived in Switzerland, where he worked as a translator for the United Nations. Afterwards he returned to Egypt, where he continued to reside. Taher died on 27 October 2022, at the age of 87.

Novels

East of the Palms (1985) His first novel was published in serialized form. Qalat Duha (1985)

Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery (1991) His third novel, set in Upper Egypt, concerns a blood feud as a result of which a young Muslim man, fleeing vengeance, finds sanctuary in a Coptic monastery. Love in Exile (1995) His fourth novel deals with the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. The Point of Light (2001)

Sunset Oasis (2007) His sixth novel is set in 19th century Egypt at the beginning of the British occupation of the country. The protagonist of the book is a nationalist Egyptian police officer who suffers from an existential crisis.

Translations

Awards

Political views

In his youth he was involved in left wing causes, and was a supporter of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s development program for Egypt. He felt that Anwar El Sadat’s ending of this policy has been a disaster for Egypt. He called himself a pan-Arabist, but he said that he did not see much good in the Arab regimes of today. He felt that Westerners want to see exoticism, gender discrimination, and problems between minorities in the works of Arab writers, but he refused to comply with these stereotypes.