Google celebrates veteran Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat birthday with a Google Doodle

CAIRO - 5 June 2021: Google celebrates veteran Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat birthday with a Google Doodle.

The Google Doodle is being shown on the search engine's homepage in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the UAE.

Google honors Rifaat today on what would have been her 91st birthday.

In June 4, 1930 Alifa was born as Fatimah Rifaat.

Later she was known by her pen name Alifa Rifaat.

At the start of her career, she wrote her stories under a pseudonym from 1955 to 1960.

Alifa’s husband was strongly against her work the matter that drove her to stop releasing anything for more than a decade. 

At the beginning of her career, she focused mainly on romantic issues but she shifted to social critique in her later career. 

Rifaat was famous for her feminist writing as well.

Her most prominent work includes “Distant View of a Minaret”, ”Bahiyya’s Eyes” and “My World of the Unknown”.

In 1983 she published a collection of 15 short stories under the title Distant View of Minaret. 

In 1984, the Modern Literature Assembly honoured Rifaat with the Excellency Award.

She died in Cairo on January 1, 1996, aged 65.

She had three sons, and left a legacy that housed more than 100 works that have been translated into different  languages.