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"The Empire Through Its Objects". A talk with Ahdaf Soueif at the Festival of Ideas
September 20, 2025From 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.
MADRID
Círculo de Bellas Artes (address: Calle Alcalá, 42). , 42).
From 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Free entry until the event’s capacity is reached.
Casa Árabe has invited the Egyptian-British writer to participate in the second edition of this event, to be held in Madrid from September 18 to 21.
Ahdaf Soueif is an Egyptian-British writer and essayist. Her best-known work, The Map of Love, is a literary exercise with many voices that connects the geographical, the personal, and the political. Soueif founded PalFest, the Palestinian Literature Festival, and has been a Trustee of the British Museum’s Board of Directors. Which is what we want to talk to her about: the nature of personal and collective memory as objects, the colonization of memories, the meaning and relevance of the great museums of the world’s empires, from the aforementioned British Museum to Cairo’s Museum of Antiquities.
Holding this talk with Ahdaf Soueif will be Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s Culture and International Relations Coordinator.
The meeting forms part of Casa Árabe’s cooperation with the Festival of Ideas, now holding its second edition.
Ahdaf Soueif
Ahdaf Soueif is a successful Egyptian-British writer and essayist. Her work The Map of Love was a finalist for the Booker Prize in 1999 and has been translated into more than 30 languages (it was published in Spanish by Quinteto in 2007). Her account of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, Cairo: A City Transformed, was published in January 2014. Her collection of essays, Mezzaterra (2004) has held major influenced, and her articles for the British newspaper The Guardian are published in the European and American press. In 2007, Soueif co-founded the Palestine Literature Festival, which is held in the occupied territories on a yearly basis. Among other honors, she received the first Mahmoud Darwish Award in 2010 and the Princess Margriet Award from the European Cultural Foundation in 2019. In 2020, after seven years of service, she resigned from the British Museum’s Board of Trustees.
Holding this talk with Ahdaf Soueif will be Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s Culture and International Relations Coordinator.
The meeting forms part of Casa Árabe’s cooperation with the Festival of Ideas, now holding its second edition.
Ahdaf Soueif
Ahdaf Soueif is a successful Egyptian-British writer and essayist. Her work The Map of Love was a finalist for the Booker Prize in 1999 and has been translated into more than 30 languages (it was published in Spanish by Quinteto in 2007). Her account of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, Cairo: A City Transformed, was published in January 2014. Her collection of essays, Mezzaterra (2004) has held major influenced, and her articles for the British newspaper The Guardian are published in the European and American press. In 2007, Soueif co-founded the Palestine Literature Festival, which is held in the occupied territories on a yearly basis. Among other honors, she received the first Mahmoud Darwish Award in 2010 and the Princess Margriet Award from the European Cultural Foundation in 2019. In 2020, after seven years of service, she resigned from the British Museum’s Board of Trustees.
Ahdaf Soueif