Authors and Translators Who Left Us in 2023

This is only a partial list of the influential authors, translators, and scholars of Arabic literature whose deaths we marked in 2023; we continue to mark the losses in Gaza.

January 2023

Cairo University Professor Mohamed Enani, also known as the “Sheikh of Arab translators,” passed away on Tuesday January 3, 2023 — just one day ahead of his 84th birthday.

As Ibrahim Sayed Fawzy writes in his tribute, Enani, who was born in Beheira governorate in Egypt in 1939, is best-known for translating Shakespeare’s classic dramatic texts into rhymed Arabic, John Milton’s Paradise Lost for which he was awarded the State Award for translation in 1982, and Edward Said’s Orientalism. Enani’s translations into English are lesser-known, yet he rendered texts by Salah AbulSabour, Salah Jaheen, Farouk Guwaida, Farouk Shusha, and others into English for the series of contemporary Arabic literature in translation issued by the General Egyptian Books Organization (GEBO). Moreover, he produced three translations by Taha Hussein, Dean of Arabic Literature: The Fulfilled Promise, The Shaykh’s Marriage Proposal, and Marginalia on the Prophet’s Biography.

Syrian poet and short-story writer Shawqy Baghdadi (1928-2023) died on January 29 at the age of 94.

Trained as a teacher, Baghdadi worked in Syrian schools and then in Algeria after the country’s independence from France. He returned to Damascus in 1972, where he helped found both the Syrian Writers Association (1951) and the Arab Writers Union (1969).

He authored numerous collections of poetry and short stories, as well as critical works.

April 2023

The pioneering translator, scholar, literary historian, and poet Salma Khadra Jayyusi — the most prominent anthologist of Arabic literature in English translation and founder of PROTA, the Project for the Translation of Arabic— died on April 20 in Amman, Jordan.

She was 100.

Jayyusi was recognized with numerous awards from institutions and governments around the world for her central role in shaping the canon of Arabic literature in English translation. As the PALRead project noted in 2020, when she won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award’s “cultural personality of the year” award, Jayyusi was a “great inspiration to many of us working in the field, the recognition of her lifelong achievements and contributions to Arabic literature and culture are so well-deserved and long overdue.”

May 2023

Social media was flooded with tributes to Syrian writer Haidar Haidar, who died May 5 at the age of 87. Haidar was born in 1936, in the village of Hussein Al-Baher on the Syrian coast.

He taught Arabic in Algeria before moving to Beirut to work in publishing, where he became a well-known supporter of the Palestinian resistance, as historian Esmat Elhalaby noted on Twitter:

“Peace to the great Syrian writer Haider Haider (1936 – 2023), fellow traveler in the Palestinian Revolution.”

June 2023

Singular Egyptian novelist Hamdy Abu Golayyel — a chronicler of the lives of Egypt’s marginalized and working-class — died on June 11. Abu Golayyel, of Bedouin origins, was born in 1968. His first literary publication was a short-story collection, Swarms of Bees (1997) followed by another short-story collection, Items Folded with Great Care (2000).

His first novel, Thieves in Retirement, was published in 2002, and his second, الفاعل, won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal and was translated by Robin Moger as A Dog with No Tail (2008).

He has won a number of literary awards, including the 2022 Banipal Prize for Humphrey Davies’ translation of his wild, border- and boundary-crossing 2018 novel, قيام وانهيار الصاد شين, translated as The Men Who Swallowed the Sun.

September 2023

Egyptian novelist Kamal Ruhayyim died on September 29, a few days after publisher Dar al-Shorouk brought out his latest novel, وكسة الشاويش. He was 76.

Born in Egypt in 1947, Ruhayyim studied law, earning a PhD from Cairo University. Although he came late onto the literary scene, publishing his first short-story collection in 1994, he earned attention and acclaim for his trilogy that explores identity and religion in Egypt and France.

AUC Press brought out his trilogy in Sarah Enany’s English translation: Days in the Diaspora (2012), Diary of a Jewish Muslim (2014), and Menorahs and Minarets (2017).

Shock and grief met news of the passing of beloved, award-winning Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa on September 30, a fierce critic of injustice, keen-eyed polemicist, gifted novelist, avid cook, and warm human being. He was just 59.

Khalifa was born near Aleppo in 1964 and studied law at Aleppo University. He was one of the founders of ALEPH magazine, which was soon shut down by government censors, an experience that would be repeated in his long and storied writing career.

He was active in the arts and cultural scene in Damascus, and wrote screenplays for television and cinema as well as his award-winning novels.

October 2023

The poet Omar Faris Abu Shaweesh (36 years old) was killed on October 7th during the shelling of the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza.

He was a prominent community activist and made various contributions in social, youth, cultural, and intellectual spheres.

He co-founded several youth associations and organizations and received the Outstanding Arab Youth Award from the Arab Youth Council for Integrated Development, affiliated with the Arab League.

Palestinian writer, journalist, musician, and photographer Yousef Dawas was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his family home in northern Gaza on October 14.

Dawas was also a guitarist and active participant in the We Are Not Numbers initiative.

He wrote in both Arabic and English and produced several videos discussing various topics, including his dream of traveling and exploring the world.

Writer Abdullah Al-Aqad, with his wife and children, was killed on October 16 by the bombardment of his house in Khan Younis city.

His last post on social media was:

“after today there won’t be any immigration, all respect to the people of Al-Shate’ Refugee camp and Al-Jala’ neighborhood who demonstrated stressing they are staying at their homes to the end”.

Poet and novelist Heba Abu Nada, author of the novel Oxygen is Not for the Dead(2017), died under bombardment in Khan Yunis on October 20.

Born in Mecca in 1991, Abu Nada studied biochemistry at the Islamic University of Gaza and completed a Master’s in clinical nutrition.

In 2017, she took second place in the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity in the novel category for her debut, Oxygen is Not for the Dead.

A number of her poems have been translated to English.

Lebanese novelist and short-story writer Layla Baalbaki (1934-2023), whose debut novel and only short-story collection vaulted her into the company of the best Arab writers of the twentieth century, died on October 21 in London.

Baalbaki’s I Live, voted as one of the 100 best Arabic novels of the 20th century by the Arab Writers Union, was her first, published when she was just 22 years old. 

I Live was followed by the fierce الإلهة الممسوخة (The Deformed Gods) and the brilliant short-story collection سفينة حنان إلى القمر (Spaceship of Tenderness to the Moon), published in 1963.

The writer and Palestinian heritage advocate Abdul Karim Al-Hashash (76 years old), along with many of his family members, was killed on October 23 in the city of Rafah.

Al-Hashash was known for his writings on Palestinian folk heritage and his research on Bedouin heritage, customs, and Arab proverbs.

He also collected dozens of rare books about Palestine, its history, and its heritage in his library.

November 2023

Sudanese sound poet and human-rights lawyer Kamal Elgizouli, whose work “pops and bristles with his iconic and vibrant marriage of pictorial and auditory,” died in the early hours of November 6 in Cairo. He had gone into the hospital after undergoing surgery the month before. Elgizouli was born in Omdurman in 1947, which is also where he received his education. His cultural and intellectual contributions were in multiple fields: literature, politics, law, and human rights.< He published several books and collections of poetry, including Omdurman Comes on the Eighth Train, Diary from Omdurman, The Mountainous Poem, and The Gust of the Wind Behind a Rusty Gate, which cover the 1970s to the 1990s and have been issued collectively as a complete set. A number of his poems have been translated to English.

The Palestinian poet and educational researcher Shahdah Al-Buhbahan (73 years old), along with his granddaughter, was killed in Gaza on November 6.

Born on February 20, 1943, in the heart of Wad Medani in Gezira State, Mohammad Al-Amin embarked on his musical journey under the tutelage of his uncle.

He died November 12, 2023.

In her tribute for ArabLit, Lemya Shammat writes: “Mohammad Al-Amin’s legacy in the world of art extends far beyond Sudan, yet he enriched the library of Sudanese art with his beautiful melodies. The news of his passing has reverberated across social media, reflecting the profound impact he had on Sudanese artistry.”

Writer and journalist Mustafa Hassan Mahmoud Al-Sawwaf (68 years old) and several members of his family were killed due to Israel’s shelling of his home in eastern Gaza in mid-November.

Al-Sawwaf is one of the most prominent Palestinian journalists and analysts, with hundreds of writings and analyses on Palestinian served as the editor-in-chief of several newspapers.

He was the first editor-in-chief of the first daily newspaper published in the Gaza Strip, which he also founded.

December 2023

The poet and writer Nour al-Din Hajjaj was killed on December 3.

Hajjaj actively participated in the “Cultural Passion” initiative, the Cordoba Association, and the Days of Theater Foundation. One of the last things he wrote on his social media account was:

“In Gaza, we witness an uncountable number of events every day. When we retire to sleep, exhausted, we witness. When we are forced to leave our homes or rooftops, with every sound of a rocket or a nearby explosion, we only say, ‘I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.’ And we know that one of these times will be the last thing we utter.”

The poet Saleem Al-Naffar (1963 – 2023) worn in Gaza to a family displaced from Jaffa, then grew up in exile in Jordan and Syria. He studied literature at Tishreen University and returned to Gaza in 1994.

He wrote a dozen books of poetry and prose.

He had been gone several days before his death was reported. Poet Mosab Abu Toha wrote on Twitter of his death: “It’s sadly reported that one of Gaza’s most prominent poets, Saleem Al-Naffar, has been buried since last Thursday with his family under the rubble of the house where he sought refuge in Gaza City. The bodies can’t be retrieved. No one can check whether any person can be rescued.”

Author, editor, translator, and educator Refaat Alareer died on December 7 in an airstrike on his sister’s home that also killed his brother, sister, and her four children.

A native of Gaza City’s Shijaieh neighborhood, Alareer studied comparative literature in London and Malaysia and taught literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza. He was editor of the 2014 collection Gaza Writes Back and co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced, and contributed to the Haymarket Books collection Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, which imagines a future Gaza.

His pinned tweet from November 1, 2023 was a farewell poem.

This list is not comprehensive. If you would like to see someone added to this list, please let us know.