Ahdaf Soueif is the author of the bestselling The Map of Love: A Novel (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999 and translated into more than twenty languages), as well as the well-loved In the Eye of the Sun and the collection of short stories, I Think of You: Stories. Ms. Soueif is also a political and cultural commentator, described by the London Review of Books as “a political analyst and commentator of the best kind,” whose clear-eyed reporting and analysis is syndicated throughout the world. A collection of her essays, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground, was published in 2004, the year in which her translation (from Arabic into English) of Mourid Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah also appeared. She writes regularly for the Guardian in the UK and has a weekly column in al-Shorouk in Egypt. In 2007 Ms. Soueif founded Engaged Events, a UK-based charity. Its first project is the Palestine Festival of Literature which takes place in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and al-Khalil/Hebron.