Hoda Barakat

is a highly regarded and acclaimed novelist. She was born in 1952 and brought up in Bsharré, Lebanon, the birthplace of Gibran Kahlil Gibran.  She studied French literature at the Lebanese University in Beirut, graduating in 1975 at the start of the civil war.  She stayed on through the war working as a teacher and journalist, until almost the end. In 1989 she moved permanently to Paris, where she now works as a radio broadcaster. Her debut novel was a landmark for an Arab woman writer, winning the prestigious Al-Naqid Award for first novels. The English version, The Stone of Laughter, was published by Garnet Publishing as part of their Arab Women Writers series, 1995. Her third Harith Al-Miyah (The Tiller of  Waters, trans. Marilyn Booth, AUC 2003) won the 2001 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. With three of her novels published in French translation, in February 2002 she was honoured as Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture. In 2005, her novel Disciples of Passion, also trans. Marilyn Booth, was published by Syracuse Univ Press, USA. In 2004, Hoda visited the UK for the first time as one of four Arab authors on the first Banipal Live UK tour.