29 Facts About Leila Aboulela

Leila Fuad Aboulela is a fiction writer, essayist, and playwright of Sudanese origin based in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Leila Aboulela grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and moved to Scotland in 1990 where she began her literary career.

Until 2023, Aboulela has published six novels and several short stories, which have been translated into fifteen languages.

Leila Aboulela's works have been included in publications such as Harper's Magazine, Granta, The Washington Post and The Guardian.

Leila Aboulela's work is critically acclaimed for its depiction of Muslim migrants in the West and the challenges they face.

Leila Aboulela's work is heavily influenced by her own experiences as an immigrant to the United Kingdom and the hardships she experienced during the transition.

Leila Aboulela studied at Victoria College in Egypt and Trinity College, Dublin.

Leila Aboulela's mother was a statistics professor at the University of Khartoum and the first demographer in Sudan after earning a PhD in the subject from a university in London.

Leila Aboulela's multicultural upbringing was marked by summer vacations in Cairo where she was able to form a connection with her mother's family and absorb Egyptian culture through food, popular media, and film.

Leila Aboulela grew up speaking both English and Arabic; however, she recalls being the victim of bullying at school due to her use of colloquial Egyptian Arabic, which she learned from her mother.

Leila Aboulela later attended the University of Khartoum, graduating in 1985 with a degree in Economics.

Leila Aboulela's thesis is titled Stock and flow models for the Sudanese educational system.

In 1990 Leila Aboulela moved to Aberdeen with her husband and children, a move she cites as the inspiration for her first novel, The Translator.

Leila Aboulela began writing in 1992 while working as a lecturer at Aberdeen College and later as a research assistant at the University of Aberdeen.

Between 2000 and 2012, Leila Aboulela lived in Jakarta, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha.

Leila Aboulela is a devout Muslim, and her faith informs much of her written work.

Leila Aboulela began writing at the age of 28, following a move to Aberdeen, Scotland, with her two young children spurred by her husband's work in the oil rigs.

Leila Aboulela began writing after enrolling in a creative writing course at the Aberdeen Central Library where she was encouraged and supported by the writer-in-residence, Todd McEwen, who passed along Leila Aboulela's work to his editor.

Leila Aboulela is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby which compiles the work of 200 women writers of African descent.

Leila Aboulela has written several radio plays, with many of them not published in print form.

Leila Aboulela's plays The Insider, The Mystic Life, The Lion of Chechnya, and The Sea Warrior were broadcast on BBC radio programmes.

Much of Leila Aboulela's writing is directly inspired by her own life.

Leila Aboulela collaborated with her father to write the novel and learn more about the life of his cousin, who served as an inspiration behind the main character, Nur.

Leila Aboulela cites Egyptian Nobel Prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz and acclaimed Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih as literary influences from her childhood and time in Sudan.

Leila Aboulela has indicated her attraction to authors such as Abdulrazak Gurnah, Doris Lessing, Buchi Emecheta, and Ahdaf Soueif who migrated to Britain at a young age and thus possess similar experiences to her own.

Leila Aboulela acknowledges the influence of Scottish writers, such as Alan Spence and Robin Jenkins.

Leila Aboulela is recognized for her nuanced depictions of Muslim immigrants, the intricacies of inter-cultural relationships, Islam, and female characters who subvert social expectations.

Leila Aboulela is considered an African, Arab, Scottish, and diasporic female author by her audience of critics, literary prize boards, and researchers.

Leila Aboulela's work has become a popular topic for PhD theses and scholarly articles surrounding Muslim and contemporary women's writing.