But 'for Salma, religion and homeland are both intertwined, both judgmental and cruel, simultaneously the sites of public shame and individual guilt' My Name is Salma was translated into 13 languages and published in 16 countries.

As a migrant she suffers indifference and racial abuse, and longs to return home to find her daughter. The story follows the life of the eponymous Arab woman starting from her early Bedouin life until, having given birth to an illegitimate daughter and fearful of becoming victim to an ‘ honour killing’ at the hands of her brother, she is forced to flee as a refugee to Britain. In 2007, Faqir's novel My Name is Salma (USA, The Cry of the Dove) was published by Doubleday. The author blames both the patriarchy of her native land and the meddling of the British colonizer for the fates of both women. There is a strong feminist message concerning two Arab women, one a Bedouin, the other from the town, incarcerated in an asylum through the actions of their brother and husband respectively. Set in colonial and postcolonial Jordan, according to one critic, the novel 'stands between East and West, and combines Arabic traditional storytelling with postmodern narrative tricks'. Pillars of Salt, her second novel, was published by Quartet Books in 1996, and has been translated into German, Danish, Dutch, Romanian and Bulgarian. Her first novel, Nisanit, published by Penguin in 1988, is set in two undisclosed Middle East countries, and recounts the story of a young girl whose father is arrested because of his political activities, and a Palestinian guerrilla fighter captured by the Israeli forces. The University of East Anglia awarded her the first PhD in Creative and Critical Writing in 1990. She gained her BA in English Literature from the University of Jordan, Amman, before going in 1984 to Britain where she completed an MA in creative writing at Lancaster University. But her mother is Circassian.įaqir was born in Amman in 1956 and educated in Jordan and England. She was born in Amman, Jordan, and her father is from Jordan, of the tribe Al-Ajarmah. Fadia Faqir ( Arabic: فادية الفقير) is a Jordanian British author and academician, involved in human rights issues.

The cry of the dove by fadia faqir