Sandpiper

Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo, Egypt, on March 23, 1950. She lived in England briefly as a child while her mother completed her doctorate before returning to Egypt. Soueif herself was educated in both Egypt and England. She studied English Literature at the University of Cairo and later, in 1979, earned a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Lancaster. In 1983, Soueif published her first collection of short stories, Aisha, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. Her debut novel, In the Eye of the Sun, was published in 1992. The short story “Sandpiper” first appeared in an eponymous collection of short stories published in 1996, which was also named Best Collection of Short Stories at the Cairo International Book Fair. Her most acclaimed work, the novel The Map of Love, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Fiction Prize in 1999. Later publications include a collection of essays, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground (2004) and a translation from Arabic to English of I Saw Ramallah, by the Palestinian writer and poet Mourid Barghouti, among others. Soueif was married to British writer, editor, and critic Ian Hamilton until his death in 2001. Together, they have one son, filmmaker and writer Omar Robert Hamilton. She splits her time between Cairo and London. Though she writes in English, Soueif has communicated that she nonetheless strives “to express an Arab reality.”

“Sandpiper” was published in Egypt during the rule of Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak, who rose to power in 1981 following the assassination of Anwar Sadat, maintained a one-party system and was known as for his authoritarian and autocratic rule, as he made use of oppressive policies throughout his reign. As a result of corruption allegations as well other complaints (including his regime’s peaceful stance with Israel), support for Mubarak quickly waned in the early 2000s. He was overthrown in 2011 at the start of the Egyptian Revolution, itself part of a widespread series of revolts that took place across the Arab world at the time, commonly referred to as the “Arab Spring.” Though “Sandpiper” itself does not delve into these events, they have formed the backdrop of Soueif’s writing and informed much of her political commentary and activism, both at the time and leading up to the Egyptian revolution.

The short story “Sandpiper” was originally published in 1996 in a collection of short stories of the same title. In 2007, a selection from this volume, including “Sandpiper,” was combined with works from Soueif’s first collection of short stories and published as I Think of You. An excerpt from Elizabeth Bishop’s early twentieth-century poem, “Sandpiper,” appears in the epigraph of the latter collection. Evocative of the narrator in Soueif’s “Sandpiper,” the poem features the perspective of the titular bird engrossed in observing the action of the waves on the sand, suggesting that the poem likely influenced the writing of Soueif’s short story. Soueif’s “Sandpiper” is also thematically similar to her critically acclaimed novel The Map of Love, which tells the story of a Victorian aristocrat who falls in love with an Egyptian nationalist. And like “Sandpiper,” it delves into the complexities of multicultural relationships, specifically through the perspective of the aristocrat’s granddaughter, an American also in love with an Egyptian. Soueif’s writing often focuses on cross-cultural encounters, global politics, displacement, identity and otherness, and as a result is often tied to labels like “postcolonial” and “world” literature. In Reflections on Exile, the renowned Palestinian academic and postcolonial critic Edward Said devotes an entire chapter to Soueif and the specificity of what he calls the “Arab-Anglo encounter.” Other well-known 20th- and 21st-century authors who write from a similar perspective include Leila Aboulela, Jamal Mahjoub (who also writes under the pseudonym Parker Bilal), and Harvard Divinity School scholar Leila Ahmed.