Leila Aboulela: Writing Muslim Lives

Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela spoke with host Bhakti Shringarpure about East African and Sudanese literature, about Abdulrazak Gurnah's Nobel prize win, on writing about Muslim lives and Muslim cultures, and the ways in which the exciting shifts in readership across the Muslim world are shifting publishing paradigms. She commented on the ways in which the events of 9/11 and the ensuing wars altered the reception of books by her and other Muslim authors.

Leila Aboulela is a writer from Sudan and currently lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. She has published five novels, two short story collections and many radio plays. She was the first every recipient of the Caine Prize for African Writing in the year 2000 for her short story "The Museum" and her novels have been long-listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Aboulela's short-story collection Elsewhere, Home was the winner of the 2018 Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award.

Bhakti Shringarpure is the Creative Director of the Radical Books Collective and the host for their BookRising podcast.