Paul Starkey is a British scholar and translator of Arabic literature.

Life and career

Starkey received his doctorate from Oxford University; the subject of his dissertation was the works of the Egyptian writer Tawfiq Hakim.^[1] He is emeritus professor of the Arabic department at the University of Durham and was also co-director of the Centre for Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW), a collaborative project by the Universities of Edinburgh, Durham and Manchester.^[2]

Starkey is the author of Modern Arabic Literature (2006), a survey of the field. He has also edited a number of books, contributed book chapters, and written essays, scholarly articles and monographs. He is a specialist on the Sixties Generation of Egyptian writers, in particular Sonallah Ibrahim and Edwar al-Kharrat.

Starkey has translated several contemporary Arabic novels, including works by Edwar al-Kharrat and Mansoura Ez-Eldin. His translations have been published in Banipal magazine and he has also served on the judging panel of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.^[3]

Select bibliography

As author

• Modern Arabic Literature (2006)

As editor

• Egypt Through the Eyes of Travellers, 2002 (co-edited with Nadia El Kholy)
• Interpreting the Orient: Travellers in Egypt and the Near East, vol 2, 2001 (with Janet Starkey)
• Unfolding the Orient: Travellers in Egypt and the Near East, 2001 (with Janet Starkey)
• Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (two volumes), 1998 (with Julie Scott Meisami)
• Travellers in Egypt, 1998 (with Janet Starkey)

As translator

• Dear Mr Kawabata by Rachid al-Daif
• Maryam's Maze by Mansoura Ez-Eldin
• Shumaisi by Turki Al-Hamad
• Stones of Bobello by Edwar Al-Kharrat
• We Are All Equally Far from Love by Adania Shibli
• The Drowning by Hammour Ziada
• ? East Winds, West Winds by Mahdī ʻĪsá Ṣaqr. American University in Cairo Press 2010.