Aboulela’s father comes from a prominent Sudanese family, with his cousin being poet, Hassan Awad Aboulela.

Early life and education īorn in 1964 in Cairo, Egypt, to an Egyptian mother and a Sudanese father, Aboulela moved at the age of six weeks to Khartoum, Sudan, where she lived continuously until 1987.

Her novel River Spirit was praised by Abdulrazak Gurnah for its 'extraordinary sympathy and insight'. Her prose has been celebrated by J.M Coetzee, Ben Okri and Ali Smith. Her work centers around political issues and themes such as identity, multi-cultural relationships, the East-West divide, migration, and Islamic spirituality. Her work is heavily influenced by her own experiences as an immigrant to the United Kingdom and the hardships she experienced during the transition. Aboulela’s work is critically acclaimed for its depiction of Muslim migrants in the West the and the challenges they face. The five-part radio serialization of her 1999 novel The Translator was short-listed for the Race In the Media Award (RIMA). BBC Radio has adapted her work extensively and broadcast a number of her plays, including The Insider, The Mystic Life and the historical drama The Lion of Chechnya. Aboulela’s works have been included in publications such as Harper's Magazine, Granta, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Her most popular novels, Minaret (2005) and The Translator (1999) both feature the stories of Muslim women in the UK and were long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and Orange Prize. Until 2023, Aboulela has published six novels and several short stories, which have been translated into fifteen languages. She grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and moved to Scotland in 1990 where she began her literary career. Leila Fuad Aboulela (Arabic:ليلى فؤاد ابوالعلا born 1964) is a fiction writer, essayist, and playwright of Sudanese origin based in Aberdeen, Scotland. University of Khartoum and London School of EconomicsĬaine Prize for African Writing Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards Saltire Fiction Book of the Year

Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela