Reem Bassiouney

Reem Bassiouney (Egyptian Arabic: ريم بسيونى Rīm Basyūni [ɾiːm bæsˈjuːni]; March 6, 1973) is an Egyptian author, professor of sociolinguistics and Chair Department of Applied Linguistics and Education at The American University in Cairo.^[1] Bassiouney is the editor of the Routledge Series of Language and Identity.^[2] She is also the editor and creator of the journal Arabic Sociolinguistics Edinburgh.^[3] She has written several novels and a number of short stories^[4] and won the 2009 Sawiris Foundation Literary Prize for Young Writers for her novel Dr. Hanaa.^[5] While much of her fiction has yet to be translated into English, her novel The Pistachio Seller was published by Syracuse University Press in 2009, and won the 2009 King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies Translation of Arabic Literature Award.^[6] Bassiouney also won Naguib Mahfouz Award from Egypt's Supreme Council for Culture in the best Egyptian novel category for her novel Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy.^[7] She was also the winner of the National Prize for Excellence in Literature of the year 2022 from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.^[8] Bassiouney won the Sheikh Zaid Literature Award for her novel Al Halwani: The Fatimid Trilogy in 2024.^[9] Reem Bassiouney is the first Egyptian woman to earn her MA (1998) and PhD (2002) in linguistics from Oxford University in the UK, the first linguist to write a book on Arabic sociolinguistics in 2009, titled "Arabic Sociolinguistics” and covering topics such as gender, variation, politics, language policy, code switching, and diglossia, and the first woman to win the Naguib Mahfouz Literature Award from Egypt's Supreme Council for Culture in 2020.^[10] Bassiouney was awarded an honorary degree by Cape Breton University for her significant contributions to culture, history, and society.^[11]

The Times Literary Supplement wrote of Bassiouney’s Al-Qata’i: Ibn Tulun’s City Without Walls that "the Egyptian author Reem Bassiouney has made a name for herself with a series of popular historical novels that bring sweeping and vivid life to this story. Having already written about the late-nineteenth-century and Mamluk eras of Cairo – the two periods that have done the most to define the city before the current one – Bassiouney now turns her attention to a more obscure, obliterated period of Egypt’s history....As in the coffeehouses of old Cairo, where the medieval epics were recited until the last century, the pleasure here is to be found in the storytelling itself ..." (Times Literary Supplement). ^[12]

Education and career

Reem Bassiouney was born in Alexandria in 1973. She attended El Nasr Girls' College, and studied English literature at Alexandria University. After graduating, she was appointed at the University, but decided to pursue her studies abroad. She was accepted for a graduate degree in linguistics at the University of Oxford, where she became a member of Somerville College. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Oxford, and worked briefly in the UK, before moving to the United States, where she was appointed professor of linguistics at the University of Utah. From there she moved to Georgetown University and then returned to her native Egypt when she joined the faculty of The American University in Cairo in 2013.^[13]

She has written several fictional works and multiple books on Arabic linguistics/sociolinguistics.

Awards and Honours

• Sawiris Cultural Award (2010, for Professor Hanaa)^[14]
• King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies Translation of Arabic Literature Award (for The Pistachio Seller)^[15]
• Naguib Mahfouz Award (2020, for Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy)^[16]
• National Prize for Excellence in Literature (2022) ^[17]
• Sheikh Zayed Book Award (2024, for Al-Qata'i: Ibn Tulun's City Without Walls)^[18]
• Honorary Doctorate (2025, from Cape Breton University) ^[19]