Hoda Barakat


Hoda Barakat is a Lebanese novelist. Barakat lived much of her life in Beirut and later moved to Paris, where she now resides. A theme often explored in her works is trauma and war, with all three of her novels being narrated by men living in the margins of society in the Lebanese civil war. Her works are originally written in Arabic and have been translated into English, Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Dutch, and Greek.

Biography

Barakat was raised in the Maronite Christian town of Bsharré, Lebanon, where she lived until she moved to Beirut. M In Beirut, Barakat studied French Literature at the Lebanese University, from which she graduated in 1975. In 1975 and 1976, she lived in Paris where she worked on a PhD, but decided to return home when the Lebanese Civil War started. During this period she worked as a teacher, translator, and journalist. Barakat has set all of her published works during this period of war. In 1985 she published her first work, a collection of short stories called Za'irat. She moved back to Paris in 1989 and has lived there ever since. There she published a series of major works including Hajar al-Dahik and Ahl el-Hawa. In 2004, she visited the United Kingdom on the first Banipal Live UK tour.
Between 2010 and 2011, she was appointed as a fellow in Nantes Institute for Advanced Study Foundation.
In fall 2013, Barakat was appointed the first Arabic Scholar in Residence at the University of Texas at Austin Middle Eastern Studies Program.

Works translated into English

Barakat's first work Hajar al-Dahik, which is the first Arabic work to have a homosexual man as its main character, won the Al-Naqid prize. Her third novel, Harit al-miyah, won the 2001 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.
She was decorated with the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002 and the Chevalier de l'Ordre du Mérite National in 2008.