Salma Khadra Jayyusi was born in Jordan to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. She grew up in Palestine surrounded by books on Arab/Islamic and Western culture, listened endlessly to stories of Arab/Islamic history and to the legends of courage, love and charity from both Arabic and Western cultures; and witnessed her father's persistent struggle to gain justice for the Palestinians.
She completed her secondary education at Schmidt's Girls College in Jerusalem, and then graduated with honors in Arabic and English Literatures from the American University of Beirut. Soon after her graduation she married a Jordanian diplomat and lived, as a diplomat’s wife, in several countries. She only began her career as a writer and professor after raising her 3 children.
She began her critical career writing in Arabic, then, when she came to London for her Ph.D. which she obtained in 1970 from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, specializing in Arabic literature, she began and has continued to write also in English. Her poetry and critical writings and her writings on literary and cultural history (in both Arabic and English) have appeared in books and in many journals.
Soon after obtaining her Ph.D. in 1970 she started her career as a University Professor teaching first at the University of Khartoum (1970-1973), then at the Universities of Algiers and Constantine (1973-1975).
Jayyusi is the chief contemporary scholar, translator, anthologist, analyst and disseminator of Arabic literature, both classic and contemporary. The tens of books she has authored, introduced, edited, and translated; the collections she has started, the projects she launched and that have added considerably to our understanding and knowledge of Arab literary and thought, have been achieved not by an institution, but single-handedly, in decades of work highlighted in this biography and summary bibliography. She is the author of the seminal 1992 book: Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature.
Details:
DOB: Enter date of birth here.
Country: Palestine
Selected works:
Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature
Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology
The Literature of Modern Arabia
Jerusalem in History and Tradition
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Website: Please enter website here; you may find the Hyperlink icon on tool bar useful here.
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