Maha Hassan’s – ‘Female Voices’

From the International Prize for Arabic Fiction official biography and book description:

Maha Hassan is a Syrian/Kurdish novelist and short-story writer, born in 1966. Having obtained her B.A. in Law from the University of Aleppo, she has gone on to write four published novels. They are: The Infinite: Biography of the Other (1995), The Picture on the Cover: the Walls of Disappointment are Higher (2002), Hymns of Nothingness(2009) and Umbilical Cord (2011 – longlisted for the IPAF in the same year). In 2004, she contributed to an annual report on freedom of the press for the organisation, Writers Without Borders, and in 2005 was awarded the Hellman/Hammett award organised by the American Human Rights Watch. She currently lives in Paris and writes in both Arabic and French.

Female Voices is a metafictional novel told through two intertwining stories: the first is the inner monologue of an author writing a novel; the second is the story of the characters she is creating. As both narratives unfold, imagination and reality merge, showing how writing can both liberate and reveal.