Sahar Khalifa is a leading Palestinian novelist. Her writing focuses on daily Palestinian life under occupation and on the lives of Arabic women, focusing on the discrimination and oppression hindering women’s progress in society and their participation in the Arab renaissance. She has published 11 novels, as well as many articles and studies. Her novels and non-fiction writing have been translated into several languages, including Hebrew, and she has been the recipient of many Arab and international awards, including the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in Egypt, the Mohamed Zafzaf Prize in Morocco, the Simone de Beauvoir Prize (the French readers' prize), the Dubai Al-Thaqafiya magazine Prize, the Alberto Moravia Award for International Fiction and the Cervantes Prize for literature translated into Spanish.