River Spirit: Leila Aboulela in conversation with Neelam Srivastava

’Extraordinary empathy and insight’ Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Leila Aboulela is the critically acclaimed author of six novels, most recently River Spirit a blazing epic of love, war and revolution sweeping across 19th Century Sudan. Her other works include The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, The Kindness of Enemies, and Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards.

Leila Aboulela is one of world literature’s most respected and adored writers. She was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and her latest story collection, Elsewhere, Home won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages and she was long-listed three times for the Orange Prize, (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction). Her writing is marked by its fierce and tender depictions of the interior lives of Muslim women and distinctive exploration of identity, migration and Islamic spirituality. Leila Aboulela was born and grew up in Khartoum, Sudan and moved in her mid-twenties to Aberdeen, Scotland.

Neelam Srivastava is Professor of Postcolonial and World Literature at Newcastle University. 

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